R help - Jan 2006 - Converting a Perl Array of Arrayrefs to an R array or matrix using RS Perl

Dear R/RS-Perl users,

I have a perl script in which I parse a large number of files and 
construct an array of arrayrefs from the data in the files.  I then 
pass that construct to R using the RS Perl interface.  I want to be 
able to use the construct as an R array or matrix so that I can use the 
R function colSums.

So far, I've tried constructing an R matrix with dummy values, and then 
populating each row of the new matrix with the nested Arrays of the 
passed construct. But that just converts the R matrix to type list, so 
I get an error when I try the function colSums.  I then tried 
converting each nested Array using as.numeric() before putting the 
values into the matrix.  But for some reason as.numeric doesn't convert 
the nested arrays to numeric, so I still get an error when I try 
colSums.  If I check the values (say matrix[1][1]) the correct values 
are in the correct locations, but it still won't perform colSums.

I've been hammering away on this for longer than I would like to admit. 
  Any help you could provide would be greatly appreciated.

Best regards,

Aaron