Assignment to R named arrays is quadratic (when extending at the same time)

named-vectors-quadratic.R

name.me = c()
system.time({name.me[as.character(1:10^3)] = T})
#   user  system elapsed 
#  0.004   0.000   0.004 
system.time({name.me[as.character(1:10^4)] = T})
#   user  system elapsed 
#  0.369   0.000   0.369 
system.time({name.me[as.character(1:10^5)] = T})
#   user  system elapsed 
# 48.187   0.055  48.235 
system.time({name.me[as.character(1:10^5)] = F})
#   user  system elapsed 
#  0.033   0.001   0.035 

In one word: avoid