[R] Read.dta cons memory exhausted

[Jeremy T. Fox]

Hello,

I am trying to read in some Stata files into R. First, read.dta claims 
my Stata 7/SE is " Not a Stata version 5-7/SE .dta file",
when it clearly is. I saved the file in Stata 6 format, and then got

 > read.dta("/tmp/jerfox/Stata/intallyrs_allquart_6.dta")
Error: cons memory exhausted (limit reached?)

The dataset is 87 MB, has only integers and reals, and has around 50 
variables. Now, this is on a 64-bit, 16 GB machine with plenty of swap 
space and free memory available. I am using the r-devel version (1.6.0), 
with the aggressive Solaris compile flags in the appendix of the 
Installation Guide.

The problem persists if I try to set  --max-nsize to some high level as 
an option on the command line when I start R.

Is R not capable of working with datasets this large? Considering that I 
can store a 12GB array in this version of R, having this low limit on 
data importation seems to be little strange. I admit to not 
understanding what cons cells are or how they work, although I did read 
help(memory).

Thanks to anyone helping develop this great program.

Jeremy

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