[Rd] R crashes when using huge data sets with character string variables

[Ben Bolker]

   On Windows you can use memory.limit.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12582793/limiting-memory-usage-in-r-under-linux

    Not sure how much that helps.

On 12/12/20 6:19 PM, Arne Henningsen wrote:
> When working with a huge data set with character string variables, I
> experienced that various commands let R crash. When I run R in a
> Linux/bash console, R terminates with the message "Killed". When I use
> RStudio, I get the message "R Session Aborted. R encountered a fatal
> error. The session was terminated. Start New Session". If an object in
> the R workspace needs too much memory, I would expect that R would not
> crash but issue an error message "Error: cannot allocate vector of
> size ...".  A minimal reproducible example (at least on my computer)
> is:
> 
> nObs <- 1e9
> 
> date <- paste( round( runif( nObs, 1981, 2015 ) ), round( runif( nObs,
> 1, 12 ) ), round( runif( nObs, 1, 31 ) ), sep = "-" )
> 
> Is this a bug or a feature of R?
> 
> Some information about my R version, OS, etc:
> 
> R> sessionInfo()
> R version 4.0.3 (2020-10-10)
> Platform: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu (64-bit)
> Running under: Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS
> 
> Matrix products: default
> BLAS:   /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/blas/libblas.so.3.9.0
> LAPACK: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/lapack/liblapack.so.3.9.0
> 
> locale:
> [1] LC_CTYPE=en_DK.UTF-8       LC_NUMERIC=C
> [3] LC_TIME=en_DK.UTF-8        LC_COLLATE=en_DK.UTF-8
> [5] LC_MONETARY=en_DK.UTF-8    LC_MESSAGES=en_DK.UTF-8
> [7] LC_PAPER=en_DK.UTF-8       LC_NAME=C
> [9] LC_ADDRESS=C               LC_TELEPHONE=C
> [11] LC_MEASUREMENT=en_DK.UTF-8 LC_IDENTIFICATION=C
> 
> attached base packages:
> [1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base
> 
> loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
> [1] compiler_4.0.3
> 
> /Arne
>