MWE:

library(stats)

months <- 1:12
months_plus_one <- months |> append(months[length(months)] + 1)

hours_list <- lapply(months_plus_one, (m)(stepfun(c(m), c(0, 50))(months)))
hours <- do.call(rbind, hours_list)

This generates a matrix, where each row comes from a call to stepfun.

This feels like a messy way of turning a vector (months) into a matrix (hours).

• Is there a cleaner way of doing this, which exploits the fact that R is designed to work with vectorised functions?
• If months were a column of a dataframe, would tidyverse provide a nicer syntax?