[R-sig-Geo] distance calculation; meuse.grid

[karl.sommer at dpi.vic.gov.au]

Hello

I was wondering if there is a way in "R" or "sp" to calculate shortest
distance from a given object such as a river, similar to the data example
"meuse.grid"  under the gstat package. I was wondering how the "dist"
variable in the "meuse.grid"  file was orignially calculated?  I would like
to perform a similar calculation as shortest distance for each point in a
field (1m x 1m grid) from an irrigation channel for which I have generated
a shape file.  Or is such an operation better performed in a GIS
environment?

Regards

Karl