[R] How to avoid for or while loops when one index depends on another

[Daniel Goldstein]

Dear R Community,

I'm trying to exploit the elegance of R by doing the following
pseudocode routine without a WHILE or FOR loop in R:

for i = 1 to length-1
  for j = (i+1) to length
    print a[i], a[j]

That is, I want i and j to be the indices of a half-matrix
1 2, 1 3, 1 4, ..., 1 length,
      2 3, 2 4, ..., 2 length,
           3 4, ..., 3 length

1. Can this be done with the 'whole object' approach (Introduction to R 
v2.1.1 section 9.2.2) and not while loops?

2. (Extra credit) Is your solution likely to be more efficient than a loop?

3. (Extra credit) How could once do this with FOR as opposed to WHILE in 
R? Clearly if you attempt "j in i+1:length" you're in trouble when i 
exceeds length.

Thanks for your help with this excellent open-source resource,
Dan

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Daniel Goldstein, Ph.D.
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