[R] Error: vector memory exhausted (limit reached?)

[Agustin Lobo]

On Tue, 28 Aug 2001, Prof Brian Ripley wrote:

> Delete some large objects.  
Thanks, but I could not remove anything once the memory became
exhausted:

> ls()
Error: vector memory exhausted (limit reached?)
> rm(lissNPC)
Error: vector memory exhausted (limit reached?)
 
 
>And read the help page mentioned so you don't
> get this problem again.
 

I had tried before asking the list, but help(memory.size) produced the
same error
and a search of memory.size under
rw1030/doc/html/search/SearchEngine.html

yields "No matches for "memory.size" have been found!"


So, I had to reset the machine.

Once the machine was up again, I launched R in the same directory and
read help(memory.size). Then I made the following test:

1. Just with a moderate .RData file loaded:
> memory.size()
[1] 12909648


2. Loading a relatively large file:
> load("lissN.R")
> memory.size()
[1] 19963560


3. And then removing the loaded (from "lissN.R") objects:
> rm(lissNPC,lissNPC.sta,lissNPC1.ady,lissNPC1.ref)
> memory.size()
[1] 19964496


The memory use was not reduced by removing these
large files, so it seems that "deleting some large files"
would not have been a solution. Is this behaviour as expected
or am I doing something (else) wrong?

Finally, the doc says that 
"`memory.limit' reports the limit in force on the total allocation."

and

"Command-line flag `--max-mem-size' sets the maximum value of obtainable
memory"

How is the current memory.limit (memory.limit()/1024^2 = 47.51563
in my labtop) set by default? Is it advisable to increase it
beyond the RAM (and use virtual memory)? Would be here any
significant difference between Win9* and linux systems?

Thanks

Agus



On Tue, 28 Aug 2001, Agustin Lobo wrote:

>
> While runing R1.3.0 on a Win95 machine,
> a process has produced the following error:
>
> Error: vector memory exhausted (limit reached?)
> In addition: Warning message:
> Reached total allocation of 47Mb: see help(memory.size)
> Lost warning messages
>
> Now I cannot save the work (not too bad,
> I had used save.image() just prior to launch
> the process), but cannot quit the program:
>
> > save.image()
> Error: vector memory exhausted (limit reached?)
> In addition: Warning message:
> Reached total allocation of 47Mb: see help(memory.size)
> Lost warning messages
> > q()
> Error: vector memory exhausted (limit reached?)
>
>
> What should I do? Just kill R?


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