Hi folks, I'm new to the list.

I have a data file with 256 columns.  Here's just a subset of names(data):

  [1] "MOUSE"               "BASEDATE1"           "PERCENTSLEEPTOT1"
  [4] "PERCENTSLEEPNIGHT1"  "PERCENTSLEEPDAY1"    "BOUTLENGTHTOT1"
  [7] "BOUTLENGTHNITE1"     "BOUTLENGTHDAY1"      "BOUTTHRESTOTP1"
 [10] "BOUTTHRESHNITEP1"    "BOUTTHRESHDAYP1"     "BOUTTHRESTOTN1"
 [13] "BOUTTHRESHNITEN1"    "BOUTTHRESHDAYN1"     "ACTONSET1"
 [16] "PEAKACT1"            "BASEDATE2"           "PERCENTSLEEPTOT2"
 [19] "PERCENTSLEEPNIGHT2"  "PERCENTSLEEPDAY2"    "BOUTLENGTHTOT2"
 [22] "BOUTLENGTHNITE2"     "BOUTLENGTHDAY2"      "BOUTTHRESTOTP2"
 [25] "BOUTTHRESHNITEP2"    "BOUTTHRESHDAYP2"     "BOUTTHRESTOTN2"
 [28] "BOUTTHRESHNITEN2"    "BOUTTHRESHDAYN2"     "ACTONSET2"
 [31] "PEAKACT2"            "BASEDATE3"           "PERCENTSLEEPTOT3"
 [34] "PERCENTSLEEPNIGHT3"  "PERCENTSLEEPDAY3"    "BOUTLENGTHTOT3"


You'll notice that certain names repeat, like BOUTLENGTHTOT1,
BOUTLENGTHTOT2, etc.  These represent each day of data recording, and they
go up to 17.

I want to extract, for example, BOUTLENGTHTOT1 - 17.  I'm new to R, and the
only ways that I know how to this are:

newData <- data[, c("BOUTLENGTHTOT1", "BOUTLENGTHTOT2", ....)]

or

newData <- data.frame(col1 = data$BOUTLENGTHTOT1, col2 =
data$BOUTLENGTHTOT2, .....)

Both of which take a long time for 17 columns.  Is there a way that I can
use a wildcard to grab all BOUTLENGTHTOT* columns?

Thanks,
Martin

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