[R] read.spss doesn't work anymore

[Hedderik van Rijn]

A couple of months ago, probably using an older version of R, R used to 
run the following code just fine:

  library("foreign")
  data.exp1 <- as.data.frame(read.spss("dataDef.sav"))

Issuing the same commands now (after starting R using --vanilla), gives 
me the following behavior:

 > library("foreign")
 > x <- read.spss("dataDef.sav")
Error in read.spss("dataDef.sav") : Calloc could not allocate 
(-2147483648 of 1) memory
 > x <- read.spss("dataDef.sav")
 > x <- read.spss("dataDef.sav")
Segmentation fault

The first two assignments return instantaneously, after the second x 
contains all original SPSS variable/column names but no data, after the 
last read.spss - it takes a while before R returns with the 
Segmentation fault. During that time, the harddisk seems to be working 
quite hard.

Does anyone know what the problem might be?

  - Hedderik.

 > version
          _
platform i386-pc-linux-gnu
arch     i386
os       linux-gnu
system   i386, linux-gnu
status
major    1
minor    7.1
year     2003
month    06
day      16
language R