[R] importing large datasets in R

Duncan Murdoch murdoch.duncan at gmail.com
Sat Jan 19 13:43:17 CET 2013


On 13-01-19 3:28 AM, gaurav singh wrote:
> Hi Everyone,
>
> I am a little new to R and the first problem I am facing is the dilemma
> whether R is suitable for files of size 2 GB's and slightly more then 2
> Million rows. When I try importing the data using read.table, it seems to
> take forever and I have to cancel the command. Are there any special
> techniques or methods which i can use or some tricks of the game that I
> should keep in mind in order to be able to do data analysis on such large
> files using R?
>

Specifying the type of each column with colClasses will speed up 
read.table a lot in a big file.

You have a lot of data, so having a lot of memory will help.  You may 
want to work in 64 bit R, which has access to a lot more than 32 bit R sees.

Duncan Murdoch



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