R help - Apr 2013 - str on large data.frame is slow on factors with many levels

str() takes 2+ minutes to print
--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
'data.frame':	9445743 obs. of  25 variables:
 $ share.id        : Factor w/ 1641168 levels "387059b61ffef5cf",..: 7
118 118 209 242 242 254 254 263 291 ...
...
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---
pausing for tens of seconds to print each factor variable which have a
lot of levels.
Why?

(R version 2.15.3 (2013-03-01) -- "Security Blanket"
 Platform: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu (64-bit))

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