melt the lower half matrix in R

Question

How can I melt a lower half triangle plus diagonal matrix ?

11 NA NA  NA  NA
12 22 NA  NA  NA
13 23 33  NA  NA
14 24 34  44  NA
15 25 35  45  55
    A <- t(matrix (c(11,  NA, NA,  NA,  NA, 12, 22, NA,  NA,  NA,
   13, 23, 33,  NA,  NA, 14, 24, 34,  44,  NA,15, 25, 
   35,  45,  55), ncol = 5)) 

 > A
     [,1] [,2] [,3] [,4] [,5]
[1,]   11   NA   NA   NA   NA
[2,]   12   22   NA   NA   NA
[3,]   13   23   33   NA   NA
[4,]   14   24   34   44   NA
[5,]   15   25   35   45   55 

To data.frame in row and col (preserving the following order)

col  row   value 
1     1      11
1     2      12
1     3      13
1     4      14
1     5      15
2     2      22
2     3      23
2     4      24
2     5      25
3     3      33
3     4      34
3     5      35
4     4      44
4     5      45
5     5      55

Answer 1

If you want the indices as columns as well, this should work:

m <- matrix(1:25,5,5)
m[upper.tri(m)] <- NA
m

     [,1] [,2] [,3] [,4] [,5]
[1,]    1   NA   NA   NA   NA
[2,]    2    7   NA   NA   NA
[3,]    3    8   13   NA   NA
[4,]    4    9   14   19   NA
[5,]    5   10   15   20   25

cbind(which(!is.na(m),arr.ind = TRUE),na.omit(as.vector(m)))
      row col   
 [1,]   1   1  1
 [2,]   2   1  2
 [3,]   3   1  3
 [4,]   4   1  4
 [5,]   5   1  5
 [6,]   2   2  7
 [7,]   3   2  8
 [8,]   4   2  9
 [9,]   5   2 10
[10,]   3   3 13
[11,]   4   3 14
[12,]   5   3 15
[13,]   4   4 19
[14,]   5   4 20
[15,]   5   5 25

I guess I'll explain this a bit. I'm using three "tricks":

1. The arr.ind argument to which to get the indices
2. The very useful na.omit function to avoid some extra typing
3. The fact that R stores matrices in column major form, hence as.vector returns the values in the right order.