[R] Memory management

[Konstantinos Euripides Vorloou]

Dear all,

I don't get it:
First of all, the help doesn't say what are the memory limits of
R. Say, what's the max heap size for instance ????

Secondly,  I invoke R with the following commands each time:

rgui --vsize 30M --nsize 1000K
rgui --vsize 30M --nsize 2000K
rgui --vsize 30M --nsize 3000K
rgui --vsize 30M --nsize 4000K

I try to open a matrix 8000x8000 by issuing

x<-matrix(nrow=8000,ncol=8000)

I  always get the following message:

Error: heap memory (20480  Kb) exhausted [needed 250000 Kb more]

It's always 250000 Kb less. Although gc() reports the memory management
as
expected (correctly ?), increased every time I invoke R with greater
vsize,nsize
params. My matrix should hold roughly 1 Meg of memory.
Is this correct ?

When I issue :

rgui --vsize 30M --nsize 5000K

R hangs up and have to kill the session.

I am using R on a 333 Celeron Pentium PC with 128Megs of memory
under windows 98. I don't think I should have a problem there. Hardware
seems ok...

Would the interpreter normally use the swap disk to
create a ramdrive for extra memory needs ? When I use
large vsize, nsize params there is an awful lot of disk swapping...
This is more obvious on slower pentiums.

I'd hate to recompile R to enlarge the heap. Is there another
way out of it ? Anything undocumented ?

Thanks for your time and attention.

Best regards,
Costas

--
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Konstantinos E. Vorloou           | Tel: +44 (0)191 374 1821
Department of Economics & Finance | Fax: +44 (0)191 374 7289
University of Durham,             | email: K.E.Vorloou at durham.ac.uk
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http://www.durham.ac.uk/Economics | http://www.durham.ac.uk/~dec3kev
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