Efficient way to pick/delete a list of rows/columns in a matrix in Mathematica

Question

This question is in a way a continuation of the question I asked here:Simple way to delete a matrix column in Mathematica to which @belisarius and @Daniel provided very help

Answer 1

Part directly supports lists of indices when slicing arrays. The following definitions exploit that:

takeOperator[a_?MatrixQ, rows_List, cols_List] :=
  a[[rows, cols]]

dropOperator[a_?MatrixQ, rows_List, cols_List] :=
 a[[##]]& @@ complementaryIndices[a, rows, cols]

complementaryIndices[a_?MatrixQ, rows_List, cols_List] :=
  Complement @@@ Transpose @ {Range /@ Dimensions @ a, {rows, cols}}

Example use:

a = RandomInteger[1000, {5000, 5000}];
First @ Timing @ takeOperator[a, Range[1, 5000, 2], Range[1, 5000, 2]]
(* 0.016 *)

First @ Timing @ dropOperator[a, Range[1, 5000, 2], Range[1, 5000, 2]]
(* 0.015 *)