[R] Kudos to all (GC works really well)

[Michael M. Meyer]

I am a lurker on the mailing list and a quiet but active user of R.  I
recently needed to do some exploration and modelling on a large set of
data.  In the past I would have been sceptical about how well R's
memory management and garbage collection would perform.  I fully
expected R or my operating system to grind to a crashing halt.
However I was delighted with the memory performance.  Garbage *was*
collected.  The memory footprint of the process did not explode.  I
got answers (and even the answers I wanted) in a remarkably short
amount of time.  I was able to do my work on a modestly configured
machine (Linux, but that is less important) with 256Mb of memory.  I
know that in the past these sames types of analyses would have played
havoc on a machine with 2Gb of memory.

So thank you to the people who have finally tamed the memory monster
(you know who you are, and I think I do too). 

Best Regards, --Mike

Mike Meyer, Salter Point Associates, Seattle WA
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