[R] strange behaviour of memory management

[Meinhard Ploner]

Hi all!
My system: R 2.1.1, Mac OS X 10.4.2.

I have a very memory-consuming job for R, consisting of a function  
calling some other functions, working often with matrices of size  
100.000 x 300. If I call the job directly after starting R the job  
takes overall 40min, however only 7min of process time. I assume the  
large difference is through memory-handling which doesn't count as  
process time. If i start the job after I make some shorter runs, some  
programming, then the job stops by reaching a memory limit. It seems  
that R doesn't release all the memory even if it don't adds global  
objects.

Further I'm interesited if for a UNIX-derivate like Mac OS X gc() or  
rm(localObjects) (used in local functions) make any difference/ 
advantage??

Best
Meinhard Ploner
Erste Bank