Extracting off-diagonal slice of large matrix

Question

I\'ve got a large nxn matrix and would like to take off-diagonal slices of varying sizes. For example:

1 2 3 4 5 6
1 2 3 4 5 6
1 2 3 4 5 6
1 2 3 4 5 6
1 2 3          


        

Answer 1

size <- 6
mat <- matrix(seq_len(size ^ 2), ncol = size)


low <- 0
high <- 3

delta <- rep(seq_len(ncol(mat)), nrow(mat)) - 
    rep(seq_len(nrow(mat)), each = ncol(mat))
#or Ben Bolker's better alternative
delta <- row(mat) - col(mat)
mat[delta < low | delta > high] <- NA
mat

this works with 5000 x 5000 matrices on my machine