[R] slow access to matrix dimnames

[Dan Dube]

hello,

i have been trying to convert my data frames to matrices in the hopes of
speeding up some of my more complicated scripts.

to assist with this, i am trying to create a "matrix column operator"
like $:
"%$%" = function(data,field) {
	as.numeric(data[,grep(field,unlist(dimnames(data)[2]))])
}

the idea here is that you can use a matrix like a dataframe:
matrix%$%"fieldname"

i am getting this matrix by converting a dataframe:
df = read.csv("data.csv")
matrix = data.matrix(df,rownames.force=FALSE)

this sets rownames to "NULL", but there is still an entry at
dimnames(matrix)[1], and so i have to access the actual column names as
dimnames(matrix)[2].  if there were only one dimension of dimnames, this
operator works quickly, but when i have to access [2], it is super slow.

am i way off base trying to do this?  i'd like to have the ability to
talk about the columns by name, since they may not always be in the same
place.  maybe i am making it more complicated than necessary?

thanks!

dan