fastest way to get Min from every column in a matrix?

Question

What is the fastest way to extract the min from each column in a matrix?

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EDIT:

Moved all the benchmarks to the answer below.

Using a Tall, Short or Wide Matrix:

  ##  TEST DATA
  set.seed(1)
  matrix.inputs <- list(
        "Square Matrix"     = matrix(sample(seq(1e6), 4^2*1e4, T), ncol=400),   #  400 x  400
        "Tall Matrix"       = matrix(sample(seq(1e6), 4^2*1e4, T), nrow=4000),  # 4000 x   40
        "Wide-short Matrix" = matrix(sample(seq(1e6), 4^2*1e4, T), ncol=4000),  #   40 x 4000
        "Wide-tall Matrix"  = matrix(sample(seq(1e6), 4^2*1e5, T), ncol=4000),   #  400 x 4000
        "Tiny Sq Matrix"    = matrix(sample(seq(1e6), 4^2*1e2, T), ncol=40)     #   40 x   40
  )

Answer 1

The sos package is great for answering these sorts of questions.

library("sos")
findFn("colMins")
library("matrixStats")
?colMins

http://finzi.psych.upenn.edu/R/library/matrixStats/html/rowRanges.html

Oddly enough, for the one example I tried colMins was slower. Perhaps someone can point out what's funny about my example?

set.seed(101); z <- matrix(runif(1e6),nrow=1000)
library(rbenchmark)
benchmark(colMins(z),apply(z,2,min))
##               test replications elapsed relative user.self sys.self
## 2 apply(z, 2, min)          100  14.290     1.00     7.216    7.057
## 1       colMins(z)          100  25.585     1.79    15.509    9.852