[R] Way to convert data frame to matrix

[Mike Sears]

?as.matrix

On Friday 30 June 2006 09:11, Wade Wall wrote:
>   I have a text file that I have imported into R.  It contains 3 columns
> and 316940 rows.  The first column is vegetation plot ID, the second
> species names and the third is a cover value (numeric).  I imported using
> the read.table function.
>
> My problem is this.  I need to reformat the information as a matrix, with
> the first column becoming the row labels and the second the column labels
> and the cover values as the matrix cell data.  However, since the
> read.tablefunction imported the data as an indexed data frame, I can't
> use the columns
> as vectors.  Is there a way around this, to convert the data frame as 3
> separate vectors?  I have been looking all over for a function, and my
> programming skills are not great.
>
> Thanks in advance
>
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>
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-- 
Michael W. Sears, Ph.D.
Associate Editor, Herpetologica
Assistant Professor
Center for Ecology
Department of Zoology
Southern Illinois University
Carbondale, IL 62901

phone: 618-453-4137
web:	http://equinox.unr.edu/homepage/msears
	http://www.ecology.siu.edu

"Natural selection is a mechanism for generating an exceedingly 
high degree of improbability"  Sir Ronald A. Fisher (1890-1962)