[R] question about running out of memory on R

[Johan Jackson]

Hi all,

R newbie, but have been reading the boards and learning lots. I have
read all documents & list-serve responses I could about R and memory
but still no answer.

QUESTION:

When the sizes of your objects exceeds your available RAM, R switches
to Virtual Memory right? If so, why does it so often run out of memory
and return an "unable to allocate XXX KB" error shortly after
switching to virtual memory when there is PLENTY of virtual memory to
be had (I think)?

I have noticed this on both my mac and my pc, so it doesn't seem to be
OS specific.

Any help in understanding this would be most appreciated!


 - J Jackson