[R] Problems with memory

[ripley@stats.ox.ac.uk]

On Fri, 12 Apr 2002, Marlon Martins dos Reis wrote:

> Dear all,
>
> I've started working with R (vs 1041) a few weeks ago, and now I'm
> having problems with the amount of memory.
> I'm working on the windows-me, my computer has 128 Mb of memory. I'm
> using the R under the emacs (ESS-5.1.20) and it is started by the
> command:
> Rterm --min-vsize=10M --max-vsize=100M --min-nsize=500k --max-nsize=1M

The only flag it might be worth using is --max-mem-size (see the rw-FAQ).
Omit all the others.

> I've been had problems when executing a loop like:
> attach("data.Rdata")
> for (i in 1:n)
> {
>          object1<-fun1(data...)
>          object2<-fun2(...object1)
>          object3<-fun3(...object2)
>          object4[,i]<-fun4(...object3)
>         rm("object1","object2","object3")
> }
> After few interactions  it stops with the message:
> "Error: cannot allocate vector of size 7890 Kb
> In addition: Warning message:
> Reached total allocation of 127Mb: see help(memory.size)"
>
> I thought that using "rm" I would avoid problem with memory. Did I miss
> some point on using "rm"? Is there any other way to remove objects from
> the memory?

It's rm(object1, object2, object3) (no quotes).

You've told us very little of what is going on, but as you keep on
re-creating object1 to object3 in the loop, deleting them at the bottom is
almost pointless.  If you don't need the objects, why name them?
Just nest the calls.

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272860 (secr)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595

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