R's dim() function: by value or by reference

Asked Nov 07 '14 at 21:14

Active Nov 07 '14 at 21:14

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I am a new learner of R. I use Python, C and Fortran, so it is a little bit hard for me to understand what R does.

dim(data) returns the data's dim attribute. This is a function that returns a value. How can one assign a value to another value by something like dim(data) <- c(2, 2)?

And also, R passes everything by value, right? dim(data) does not return the address of dim attribute. This is making it more confusing, that we can use dim(data) <- c(2, 2) to assign a new dimension.

Thanks!

asked Nov 07 '14 at 21:14

Yuxiang Wang

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see http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11563154/what-are-replacement-functions-in-r – Ben Bolker Nov 07 '14 at 21:18
@BenBolker Great! Thank you so much. So it is a special case where the variable is passed by reference inside? – Yuxiang Wang Nov 07 '14 at 21:24
more or less, although there may still be some copying involved ... – Ben Bolker Nov 07 '14 at 21:28

R's dim() function: by value or by reference

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