The following, which was recently discussions on the rcom-l list, is a situation where coercing x1mat to a vector using as.vector results in an object that is.vector says is not a vector: R> x1mat<-matrix(list(1,1.1,1+1i,"a",NA,NaN), 3, 2) R> is.vector(as.vector(x1mat)) [1] FALSE