DataMatrix is a Python module that tries to emulate the behavior of the data.frame data structure of the R programming language. Data.frames are essentially tables that can be queried either by row or columns, or, in the presence of a header, even by column names.
DataMatrix emulates this behavior by reading a text file (or file-like object), and returning an object where rows and columns can be accessed by a variety of methods.
Row names are a way to identify a row precisely (R uses it because some of its operations return the names of the rows rather than their values) and are either read from a specific column or a progressive numeric value otherwise.
DataMatrix objects can be queried with a dictionary-like syntax (e.g., matrix["column name"]), or by other methods.