Hi, I apply "optim" a given input-matrix "imat" by row in the following way: apply(imat, 1, function(x) try(optim(0.1, gf, method="BFGS", y=x)$par, silent=1)) where gr<-function(x,y) is defined upstream. Now, for several rows I get an error message from the "optim", so the output matrix get the error message as a string and turns into a matrix of strings. Instead, I want NA in the output matrix each time an error in "optim" occurs. I thought try() would handle this? What's the best way of doing this? Thanks, Serguei Kaniovski [[alternative HTML version deleted]]