[R] Arrays of variable dimensionality

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On 30/05/2015 11:29, WRAY NICHOLAS wrote:
> Hello folks
>
> Supposing I have a multidimensional array in an R prog, say a 4D array.
>
> I want the coordinate quantities to be read off from a vector.  The values
> in the vector (vec) are generated by a function.

It is not clear what you want to do.
>
> This is easy if the number of dimensions is fixed for both the array and
> the number of elements in the  vector (say 4):
>
> X<-array[vec[1],vec[2],vec[3],vec[4]]

Is 'array' an array and not the function of that name?

I am guess you are missing do.call, the way to generate calls with 
variable-length argument lists.  My guess of your intention could be written

arr <- array(1:256, rep(4,4))
vec <- 1:4
arr[1, 2, 3, 4] # same as
do.call(`[`, c(list(arr), as.list(vec)))

>
> But if the number of dimensions of the array is not fixed and can change
> during the course of the prog I am stuck as to how to do this, as I don’t
> know a way of feeding a vector or list of unspecified beforehand length
> into the coordinates for an array
>
> I can’t find anything useful about this on the net
>
> Does anyone have any ideas?
> Thanks, Nick
>
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>
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PLEASE do.


-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Emeritus Professor of Applied Statistics, University of Oxford
1 South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3TG, UK