if we already have nrow and ncol in r, then why there is NROW and NCOL is there. is there any difference between them or they are just an alias?

mx <- matrix(1:12,3,4) nrow(mx) NROW(mx) ncol(mx) NCOL(mx)
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1 Answer

in R you always can check the code of functions, typing their names without the parenthesis. Doing this, you can see the differences between NCOL and ncol:

NCOL # function (x) # if (length(d <- dim(x)) > 1L) d[2L] else 1L # <bytecode: 0x560bca6cb290> # <environment: namespace:base> ncol # function (x) # dim(x)[2L] # <bytecode: 0x560bc9691cd0> # <environment: namespace:base>

ncol will always return the second dimension of the argument, while NCOL will check if the argument only has one dimension, in which case it will return 1.