How to Create an Array in R
You have two different options for constructing matrices or arrays. Either you use the creator functions matrix() and array(), or you simply change the dimensions using the dim() function.
Use the creator functions in R
You can create an array easily with the array() function, where you give the data as the first argument and a vector with the sizes of the dimensions as the second argument. The number of dimension sizes in that argument gives you the number of dimensions. For example, you make an array with four columns, three rows, and two tables like this:
> my.array <- array(1:24, dim=c(3,4,2)) > my.array , , 1 [,1] [,2] [,3] [,4] [1,] 1 4 7 10 [2,] 2 5 8 11 [3,] 3 6 9 12 , , 2 [,1] [,2] [,3] [,4] [1,] 13 16 19 22 [2,] 14 17 20 23 [3,] 15 18 21 24
This array has three dimensions. Notice that, although the rows are given as the first dimension, the tables are filled column-wise. So, for arrays, R fills the columns, then the rows, and then the rest.
Change the dimensions of a vector in R
Alternatively, you could just add the dimensions using the dim() function. This is a little hack that goes a bit faster than using the array() function; it’s especially useful if you have your data already in a vector. (This little trick also works for creating matrices, by the way, because a matrix is nothing more than an array with only two dimensions.)
Say you already have a vector with the numbers 1 through 24, like this:
> my.vector <- 1:24
You can easily convert that vector to an array exactly like my.array simply by assigning the dimensions, like this:
> dim(my.vector) <- c(3,4,2)
If you check how my.vector looks like now, you see there is no difference from the array my.array that you created before.
You can check whether two objects are identical by using the identical() function. To check, for example, whether my.vector and my.array are identical, you simply do the following:
> identical(my.array, my.vector)  TRUE