How to get Element of Matrix at specific [Row, Column] in R?

R – Get Element of Matrix at [Row, Column]

To get an element of a matrix present at given row and column, specify the row number and column number, separated by comma, in square brackets, after the matrix variable name. This expression returns the element in the matrix at specified row and column.

In this tutorial, we will learn how to access an element at given row and column.

Syntax

The syntax to access element at given row and column in a matrix is

X[row, column]

where

Argument	Description
X	A matrix.
row	Row number.
column	Column number.

Return Value

The expression returns the element in matrix X at given row and column.

Examples

In the following program, we create a matrix and access the element at row 2, column 3.

example.R

data <- c(2, 4, 7, 5, 10, 8)
A <- matrix(data, nrow = 2)
element <- A[2, 3]
print(element)

Output

[1] 8

If the row number or column number is out of bounds for a given matrix, then R throws Error “subscript out of bounds”.

Let us try to access an element at row = 8 and column = 3, where the matrix is of size 2 x 3.

example.R

data <- c(2, 4, 7, 5, 10, 8)
A <- matrix(data, nrow = 2)
element <- A[8, 3]
print(element)

Output

Error in A[8, 3] : subscript out of bounds

Conclusion

In this R Tutorial, we learned how to get element of a Matrix at given row and column in R, with the help of examples.