R-beta: Memory Management in R-0.50-a4

[Ian Thurlbeck]

Dear R users

we're having a problem reading a largish data file using
read.table().  The file consists of 175000 lines of 4
floating pt numbers. Here's what happens:

> dat_read.table('sst.dat')
Error: memory exhausted

(This is line 358 of src/main/memory.c).

Cutting down the file to around 15000 lines allows
read.table() to work OK.

I edited the memory limits in Platform.h and re-compiled
and now read.table() can manage up to around 125000 lines.

#define R_VSIZE 30000000L       /* 15 times original figure (Defn.h) */
#define R_NSIZE  1000000L       /* 5 times original figure (Defn.h) */
#define R_PPSSIZE 100000L       /* 10 times original figure (Defn.h) */

Clearly I can keep upping these values until it works, but has
the side-effect of making the running R binary pretty big.

What can I do? Is the answer a better memory management
system ?

Any help appreciated.

Yours

Ian

-- 
Ian Thurlbeck                http://www.stams.strath.ac.uk/
Statistics and Modelling Science, University of Strathclyde
Livingstone Tower, 26 Richmond Street, Glasgow, UK,  G1 1XH
Tel: +44 (0)141 548 3667           Fax: +44 (0)141 552 2079
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