Hi guys,

I got a sparse matrix. All the elements of this matrix are either 0, 1, or 2. I only need to storage 1 and 2. Since there are so many sparse matrix storage formats, I am wondering is there any R package suitable for the storage of this kind of sparse matrix?

Thanks!

Hi ,

this is not a specific Bioconductor question, so it may happen that you do not get the most useful answer here. If you google for "rstats sparse matrix" the first link points to this blog entry http://www.johnmyleswhite.com/notebook/2011/10/31/using-sparse-matrices-in-r which mentions that the Matrix package might be what you are looking for. Read the corresponding documentation and in case of further questiond I guess the proper forum to ask is the R-help mailing list (see http://www.r-project.org/mail.html). Note also that the way you have formulated the question is not very clear. A sparse matrix is a matrix in which most of the elements are zero (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparse_matrix) and the most efficient way to store it depends also on whether the matrix is symmetric, etc. Since you mention you only need to store 2 other values different from zero, the RAW data type might be helpful in this case since it uses only one byte per value. Again, try to look up the corresponding documentation and existing knowledge base through google and ask in R-help in case you do not find anything useful.

cheers,

robert.

Thanks！

I can't add comment. So I post an answer.