[R] loading only parts of RData files?

[Jannis]

Dear List members,


I would like to load R objects saved as RData file but ran into the problem that these objects are too large for my RAM ('Can not allocate vactor of size XX...'). Switching to a Linux machine is no option, neither is raising the memory limit.

I am now wondering whether it is possible to load only specific single objects saved in these *.RData files into the workspace. As these objects usually are multidimensional arrays, ideally I would be able to load only specific dimensions of these arrays. IS there any possibility to do such in R?

I know that NCDF files (and the RNetCDF package) provides possibilities to only read specific parts of the data into the memory, but I switching to this format would involve a lot of hassle so I would prefer to stay with something as convenient as save() and load() without switching to non R file formats.


Thanks for any suggestions
Jannis