Get element at the specific position from matrix in R (original) (raw)

Last Updated : 23 Jul, 2025

At any point in time, a matrix may be required to be traversed for an element at a specific position. In this article, we are going to access the elements from a matrix in R Programming Language using integer vector, and logical vector as the index.

Accessing Elements in a Matrix

In R Programming Language we have several methods to Accessing Elements in a Matrix In R we can access matrix elements using square brackets [ ] notation.

Create a matrix

R `

Create a matrix

mat <- matrix(1:12,3,4)

mat

`

**Output:

 [,1] [,2] [,3] [,4]  

[1,] 1 4 7 10
[2,] 2 5 8 11
[3,] 3 6 9 12

Accessing Single Element in a Matrix

R `

Create a matrix

mat <- matrix(1:12,3,4) mat

Access the element in the 1st row and 2nd column

element <- mat[1, 2] print(element)

`

**Output:

 [,1] [,2] [,3] [,4]  

[1,] 1 4 7 10
[2,] 2 5 8 11
[3,] 3 6 9 12[1] 4

Accessing Entire Row or Column

R `

Access the entire 2nd row

row_vector <- mat[2, ] print(row_vector)

Access the entire 3rd column

col_vector <- mat[, 3] print(col_vector)

`

**Output:

[1] 2 5 8 11[1] 7 8 9

Accessing Subsetting Matrix

R `

Create a 3x4 matrix

mat <- matrix(1:12,3,4)

Subset a 2x2 matrix from the original

subset_mat <- mat[1:2, 2:3] print(subset_mat)

`

**Output:

 [,1] [,2]  

[1,] 4 7
[2,] 5 8

Accessing matrix Conditional Access

R `

Create a 3x4 matrix

mat <- matrix(1:12,3,4)

Access elements greater than 5

greater_than_5 <- mat[mat > 5] print(greater_than_5)

`

**Output:

[1] 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

These methods provide flexibility depending on our specific needs and the structure of our matrices. Choose the one that best fits our use case.