Hello, Oops!
What happened to the function 'f'? Forgot to copy and pasted only the rest, now complete. f <- function(x){ nr <- nrow(x) result <- matrix(0, nrow=nr, ncol=ncol(x)) colnames(result) <- colnames(x) inp.ord <- order(x)[1:nr] - 1 # Keep only one per row, must be zero based inx <- cbind(1:nr, inp.ord %/% nr + 1) # Index matrix result[inx] <- 100 result } # Original example input <- as.matrix(data.frame(a=c(5,1,3,7), b=c(2,6,4,8))) (input) desired.result <- as.matrix(data.frame(a=c(100,0,100,0), b=c(0,100,0,100))) (desired.result) all.equal(f(input), desired.result) # Two other examples set.seed(123) (x <- matrix(sample(10, 10), ncol=2)) f(x) (y <- matrix(sample(40, 40), ncol=5)) f(y) Note that there's no loops (or apply, which is also a loop.) Rui Barradas -- View this message in context: http://r.789695.n4.nabble.com/filling-the-matrix-row-by-row-in-the-order-from-lower-to-larger-elements-tp4538171p4538486.html Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.