I have e.g. t <- matrix( nrow=2, ncol=3, byrow=TRUE, c('a1','a2','a3','b1','b2','b3') ) and i <- c( 3, 2) Is it possible to formulate a simple expression that gets c( t[ 1, i[1] ], t[ 2, i[2] ] ) (and so on for longer matrices)? The result would be: [1] "a3" "b2" Thanks - Wolfram