What is the best way to tidy a matrix in R - r

Question

Is there a best practice means of "tidying" a matrix/array? By "tidy" in this context I mean
one row per element of the matrix
one column per dimension. the elements of these columns give you the "coordinates" of the matrix element which is stored on that row
I have an example here for a 2d matrix, but ideally this would work with an array also (This example works for mm <- array(1:18, c(3,3,3)), but I thought that would be too much to paste in here)
mm <- matrix(1:9, nrow = 3)
mm
#> [,1] [,2] [,3]
#> [1,] 1 4 7
#> [2,] 2 5 8
#> [3,] 3 6 9
inds <- which(mm > -Inf, arr.ind = TRUE)
cbind(inds, value = mm[inds])
#> row col value
#> [1,] 1 1 1
#> [2,] 2 1 2
#> [3,] 3 1 3
#> [4,] 1 2 4
#> [5,] 2 2 5
#> [6,] 3 2 6
#> [7,] 1 3 7
#> [8,] 2 3 8
#> [9,] 3 3 9

Answer 1

as.data.frame.table One way to convert from wide to long is the following. See ?as.data.frame.table for more information. No packages are used.
mm <- matrix(1:9, 3)
long <- as.data.frame.table(mm)
The code gives this data.frame:
> long
Var1 Var2 Freq
1 A A 1
2 B A 2
3 C A 3
4 A B 4
5 B B 5
6 C B 6
7 A C 7
8 B C 8
9 C C 9
numbers
If you prefer row and column numbers:
long[1:2] <- lapply(long[1:2], as.numeric)
giving:
> long
Var1 Var2 Freq
1 1 1 1
2 2 1 2
3 3 1 3
4 1 2 4
5 2 2 5
6 3 2 6
7 1 3 7
8 2 3 8
9 3 3 9
names Note that above it used A, B, C, ... because there were no row or column names. They would have been used if present. That is, had there been row and column names and dimension names the output would look like this:
mm2 <- array(1:9, c(3, 3), dimnames = list(A = c("a", "b", "c"), B = c("x", "y", "z")))
as.data.frame.table(mm2, responseName = "Val")
giving:
A B Val
1 a x 1
2 b x 2
3 c x 3
4 a y 4
5 b y 5
6 c y 6
7 a z 7
8 b z 8
9 c z 9
3d
Here is a 3d example:
as.data.frame.table(array(1:8, c(2,2,2)))
giving:
Var1 Var2 Var3 Freq
1 A A A 1
2 B A A 2
3 A B A 3
4 B B A 4
5 A A B 5
6 B A B 6
7 A B B 7
8 B B B 8
2d only For 2d one can alternately use row and col:
sapply(list(row(mm), col(mm), mm), c)
or
cbind(c(row(mm)), c(col(mm)), c(mm))
Either of these give this matrix:
[,1] [,2] [,3]
[1,] 1 1 1
[2,] 2 1 2
[3,] 3 1 3
[4,] 1 2 4
[5,] 2 2 5
[6,] 3 2 6
[7,] 1 3 7
[8,] 2 3 8
[9,] 3 3 9

Answer 2

Another method is to use arrayInd together with cbind like this.
# a 3 X 3 X 2 array
mm <- array(1:18, dim=c(3,3,2))
Similar to your code, but with the more natural arrayInd function, we have
# get array in desired format
myMat <- cbind(c(mm), arrayInd(seq_along(mm), .dim=dim(mm)))
# add column names
colnames(myMat) <- c("values", letters[24:26])
which returns
myMat
values x y z
[1,] 1 1 1 1
[2,] 2 2 1 1
[3,] 3 3 1 1
[4,] 4 1 2 1
[5,] 5 2 2 1
[6,] 6 3 2 1
[7,] 7 1 3 1
[8,] 8 2 3 1
[9,] 9 3 3 1
[10,] 10 1 1 2
[11,] 11 2 1 2
[12,] 12 3 1 2
[13,] 13 1 2 2
[14,] 14 2 2 2
[15,] 15 3 2 2
[16,] 16 1 3 2
[17,] 17 2 3 2
[18,] 18 3 3 2