[R] memory use without running gc()

[Allan Engelhardt]

How about asking the operating system, e.g.

### Method 1
## Setup
cmd <- paste("ps -o vsz", Sys.getpid())
## In your logging routine
z <- system(cmd, intern = TRUE)
cat("Virtual size: ", z[2], "\n", sep = "")

### Method 2
## Setup
file <- paste("/proc", Sys.getpid(), "stat", sep = "/")
what <- vector("list", 44); what[[23]] <- integer(0)
## In your logging routine
vsz <- scan(file, what = what, quiet = TRUE)[[23]]/1024
cat("Virtual size: ", vsz, "\n", sep = "")

### Time the methods
library("rbenchmark")
benchmark(scan = scan(file, what = what, quiet = TRUE)[[23]]/1024,
           system = system(cmd, intern = TRUE),
           columns = c("test", "replications", "elapsed", "relative"), 
order = "relative")
#     test replications elapsed relative
# 1   scan          100   0.015   1.0000
# 2 system          100   2.408 160.5333


The scan method should be plenty fast.  Change as appropriate if your 
definition of memory is different from virtual size.

Hope this helps a little.

Allan


On 06/08/10 19:11, Johann Hibschman wrote:
> jim holtman<jholtman at gmail.com>  writes:
>
>    
>> ?memory.size
>>      
> Only works on Windows.  I guess I should have specified; this is on Linux.
>
> Thanks,
> Johann
>
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