Array: subtract by row

Question

How can I subtract a vector of each row in a array?

a <- array(1:8, dim=c(2,2,2))
a
, , 1

      [,1] [,2]
[1,]    1    3
[2,]    2    4

, , 2

       [,1] [,2]
[1,]    5    7
[2,]    6    8

Using apply gives me:

apply(a,c(1,2), '-',c(1,5))
, , 1

      [,1] [,2]
[1,]    0    1
[2,]    0    1

, , 2

      [,1] [,2]
[1,]    2    3
[2,]    2    3

What I am trying to get is:

, , 1

      [,1] [,2]
[1,]    0   -2
[2,]    1   -1

, , 2

      [,1] [,2]
[1,]    4    2
[2,]    5    3

Thanks in advance for any hints

Answer 1

Use sweep to operate on a particular margin of the array: rows are the second dimension (margin).

sweep(a,MARGIN=2,c(1,5),FUN="-")