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setTimeLimit() fails when out of memory.

1 message · Jeroen Ooms

Original
Jeroen Ooms
# 
I am using the function setTimeLimit(elapsed=60) in R web applications to
prevent processes from taking up too many resources. This works fine when a
calculation takes too long, however, when the machine runs out of memory,
the time limit also seems to fail, resulting in a stuck process maximum
memory until killed manually. This probably makes sense in some way, but I
was wondering if there is a solution. Some example code using ggplot2 that
crashes my machine:

#time limit works fine:
setTimeLimit(elapsed=10);
while(TRUE) {sqrt(pi)}
setTimeLimit();

#time limit fails:
library(ggplot2);
x <- rnorm(1e6); 
y <- rnorm(1e6);
setTimeLimit(elapsed=10);
qplot(x,y,geom="density2d");
setTimeLimit();

Jeroen Ooms
www.stat.ucla.edu/~jeroen