Here are some examples:
> z$mean <- rowMeans(subset(z, select = c(x, y)), na.rm = TRUE)
> z
w x y mean
1 5 1 1 1
2 6 2 2 2
3 7 3 3 3
4 8 4 NA 4
weighted mean
> z$y <- rev(z$y)
> z
w x y mean
1 5 1 NA 1
2 6 2 3 2
3 7 3 2 3
4 8 4 1 4
>
> weight <- c(1, 2) # x * 1/3 + y * 2/3
> z$wmean <- apply(subset(z, select = c(x, y)), 1, function(d) weighted.mean(d, weight, na.rm = TRUE))
> z
w x y mean wmean
1 5 1 NA 1 1.000000
2 6 2 3 2 2.666667
3 7 3 2 3 2.333333
4 8 4 1 4 2.000000