I would have expected coercion to an integer vector or at least a complaint that the user did not provide a valid matrix dimension.
.col(c(1,1))
Error in .col(c(1, 1)) :
a matrix-like object is required as argument to 'col'
.col(c(1L,1L))
[,1]
[1,] 1
sessionInfo()
R version 3.5.0 (2018-04-23)
Platform: x86_64-apple-darwin15.6.0 (64-bit)
Running under: macOS High Sierra 10.13.4
Matrix products: default
BLAS: /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/3.5/Resources/lib/libRblas.0.dylib
LAPACK: /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/3.5/Resources/lib/libRlapack.dylib
locale:
[1] en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8/C/en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8
attached base packages:
[1] stats graphics grDevices utils datasets methods base
loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
[1] compiler_3.5.0