[R] Optimized File Reading with R

[Lorenzo Isella]

Dear All,
Hope I am not bumping into a FAQ, but so far my online search has been fruitless
I need to read some data file using R. I am using the (I think)
standard command:

data_150<-read.table("y_complete06000", header=FALSE)

where y_complete06000 is a 6000 by 40 table of numbers.
I am puzzled at the fact that R is taking several minutes to read this file.
First I thought it may have been due to its shape, but even
re-expressing and saving the matrix as a 1D array does not help.
It is not a small file, but not even huge (it amounts to about 5Mb of
text file).
Is there anything I can do to speed up the file reading?
Many thanks

Lorenzo