tidyr::gather vs. reshape2::melt on matrices

Question

I\'ve been a long time user of reshape2::melt in a rather non-standard way: I\'m running numeric experiments and get a matrix as a result. I then melt it and pr

Answer 1

Perhaps a better answer will emerge, but in the meantime, I'll convert my comments to an answer:

Quoting from the README to "tidyr":

Note that tidyr is designed for use in conjunction with dplyr, so you should always load both.

... and from the README to "dplyr":

dplyr is the next iteration of plyr, focussed on tools for working with data frames (hence the d in the name).

As such, it sort of makes sense to not have methods for matrices.

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Since gather already wraps around melt, if you really wanted a matrix method, you can save yourself writing a custom function and just do something like:

gather.matrix <- reshape2:::melt.matrix