[Rd] reshape() makes R run out of memory (PR#14121)

[abelikoff at gmail.com]

Full_Name: Alexander L. Belikoff
Version: 2.8.1
OS: Ubuntu 9.04 (x86_64)
Submission from: (NULL) (67.244.71.200)


I'm trying to reshape the following data frame:

ID                     DATE1             DATE2      VALUE_TYPE        VALUE
'abcd1233'         2009-11-12        2009-12-23     'TYPE1'           123.45
...

VALUE_TYPE is a string and is a factor with only 2 values (say TYPE1 and TYPE2).
I need to transform it into the following data frame ("wide" transpose) based on
common ID and DATEs:

ID                     DATE1             DATE2      VALUE.TYPE1   VALUE.TYPE2
'abcd1233'         2009-11-12       2009-12-23      123.45        NA
...

Using stock reshape() as follows:

    tbl2 <- reshape(tbl, direction = "wide", idvar = c("ID", "DATE1", "DATE2"),
timevar = "VALUE_TYPE");

On a toy data frame this works fine. On a real one with 4.7 million entries
(although about 70% of VALUEs are NA) it runs out of memory:

    Error: cannot allocate vector of size 4.8 Gb

When the real data frame is loaded the R process takes about 200Mb of virtual
memory. The machine has 4 Gb of RAM.

I've posted a .Rdata file with the data frame in question at
http://belikoff.net/stuff/other/reshape_test.Rdata.gz


P.S. Just checked R 2.10.0 using an Intel PC with 2Gb RAM running Xp Pro (32
bit):

> tbl2 <- reshape(tbl, direction = "wide", idvar = c("ID", "DATE1", "DATE2"),
timevar = "VALUE_TYPE");
Error: cannot allocate vector of size 53.9 Mb
In addition: Warning messages:
1: In format.POSIXlt(as.POSIXlt(x), ...) :
  Reached total allocation of 1535Mb: see help(memory.size)
2: In format.POSIXlt(as.POSIXlt(x), ...) :
  Reached total allocation of 1535Mb: see help(memory.size)
3: In format.POSIXlt(as.POSIXlt(x), ...) :
  Reached total allocation of 1535Mb: see help(memory.size)
4: In format.POSIXlt(as.POSIXlt(x), ...) :
  Reached total allocation of 1535Mb: see help(memory.size)
5: In format.POSIXlt(as.POSIXlt(x), ...) :
  Reached total allocation of 1535Mb: see help(memory.size)
6: In format.POSIXlt(as.POSIXlt(x), ...) :
  Reached total allocation of 1535Mb: see help(memory.size)
>