[R] Error: cannot allocate vector of size... but with a twist

[James Muller]

Hi,

I have a memory problem, one which I've seen pop up in the list a few 
times, but which seems to be a little different. It is the Error: cannot 
allocate vector of size x problem. I'm running R2.0 on RH9.

My R program is joining big datasets together, so there are lots of 
duplicate cases of data in memory. This (and other tasks) prompted me 
to... expand... my swap partition to 16Gb. I have 0.5Gb of regular, fast 
DDR. The OS seems to be fine accepting the large amount of memory, and 
I'm not restricting memory use or vector size in any way.

R chews up memory up until the 3.5Gb area, then halts. Here's the last 
bit of output:

 > # join the data together
 > cdata01.data <- 
cbind(c.1,c.2,c.3,c.4,c.5,c.6,c.7,c.8,c.9,c.10,c.11,c.12,c.13,c.14,c.15,c.16,c.17,c.18,c.19,c.20,c.21,c.22,c.23,c.24,c.25,c.26,c.27,c.28,c.29,c.30,c.31,c.32,c.33)
Error: cannot allocate vector of size 145 Kb
Execution halted

145--Kb---?? This has me rather lost. Maybe on overflow of some sort?? 
Maybe on OS problem of some sort? I'm scratching here.

Before you question it, there is a legitimate reason for sticking all 
these components in the one data.frame.

One of the problems here is that tinkering is not really feasible. This 
cbind took 1.5 hrs to finally halt.

Any help greatly appreciated,

James