subtract a constant vector from each row in a matrix in r

Question

I have a matrix with 5 columns and 4 rows. I also have a vector with 3 columns. I want to subtract the values in the vector from columns 3,4 and 5 respectively at each row o

Answer 1

This can be done with the rray package in a very satisfying way (using its (numpy-like) broadcasting - operator %b-%):

#install.packages("rray")
library(rray)

b <- matrix(rep(1:20), nrow=4, ncol=5)
x <- c(5, 6, 7)

b[, 3:5] <- b[, 3:5] %b-% matrix(x, 1)
b
#>      [,1] [,2] [,3] [,4] [,5]
#> [1,]    1    5    4    7   10
#> [2,]    2    6    5    8   11
#> [3,]    3    7    6    9   12
#> [4,]    4    8    7   10   13

For large matrices this is even faster than sweep:

#install.packages("bench")
res <- bench::press(
  size = c(10, 1000, 10000),
  frac_selected = c(0.1, 0.5, 1),
  {
  B <- matrix(sample(size*size), nrow=size, ncol=size)
  B2 <- B
  x <- sample(size, size=ceiling(size*frac_selected))
  idx <- sample(size, size=ceiling(size*frac_selected))

  bench::mark(rray = {B2[, idx] <- B[, idx, drop = FALSE] %b-% matrix(x, nrow = 1); B2}, 
              sweep = {B2[, idx] <- sweep(B[, idx, drop = FALSE], MARGIN = 2, x); B2}
  )
  }
)
plot(res)