> Hola!
>
> I am working on a problem where data points are (square) matrices. Is
> there a way to make a "vector" of matrices, such that it can be stored
> in a data.frame?
I agree with previous posters that in most cases, you would want to
store matrices in a list. However, if you already have a bunch of data
in a data.frame, and really want your matrices to hang around with that
data (for example for persistent storage purposes), you could use the
serialize() function to convert them into a string. I have the following
functions ("object to character" and "character to object"), that I have
used for that exactly:
# This function stores an R object as a character string.
# Useful for storing in places that don't accept an R list
# or other objects.
otc <- function(o)
{
return(rawToChar(serialize(o, NULL, ascii=TRUE)))
}
# This function accepts an object that has been serialized as
# a character string and returns the original object.
cto <- function(c)
{
return(unserialize(charToRaw(c)))
}
# Demo code
x <- matrix(1:4,nrow=2)
s <- otc(x)
d <- data.frame(a=c,stringsAsFactors=FALSE)
cto(d$a[1])
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