Generally disable dimension dropping for matrices?

Question

As we all know, R tries to reduce matrices to vectors if its column- or row-dimension is 1. This automatic dropping of dimensions can be prevented by use of the drop=F

Answer 1

You can do it by redefining the [ function:

x <- matrix(1:4,2)

`[` <- function(...) base::`[`(...,drop=FALSE)
x[,1]
     [,1]
[1,]    1
[2,]    2

You cannot override the drop argument when you call it now though, so you might want to use it sparingly and delete when done.