Convert a row of a data frame to vector

I recommend unlist, which keeps the names.

unlist(df[1,])
  a   b   c 
1.0 2.0 2.6 

is.vector(unlist(df[1,]))
[1] TRUE

If you don't want a named vector:

unname(unlist(df[1,]))
[1] 1.0 2.0 2.6

When you extract a single row from a data frame you get a one-row data frame. Convert it to a numeric vector:

as.numeric(df[1,])

As @Roland suggests, unlist(df[1,]) will convert the one-row data frame to a numeric vector without dropping the names. Therefore unname(unlist(df[1,])) is another, slightly more explicit way to get to the same result.

As @Josh comments below, if you have a not-completely-numeric (alphabetic, factor, mixed ...) data frame, you need as.character(df[1,]) instead.

Here is a dplyr based option:

newV = df %>% slice(1) %>% unlist(use.names = FALSE)

# or slightly different:
newV = df %>% slice(1) %>% unlist() %>% unname()