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Encodebuf? yet another memory question

2 messages · Tim Howard, Brian Ripley

Tim Howard
# 
Hi all,
   I was surprised to see this memory error:

Error in scan(Cn.minex13, nlines = 2, quiet = TRUE) : 
        Could not allocate memory for Encodebuf
[1] 256843776
[1] 180144528
[1] 2147483648


I don't have any objects named 'Encodebuf' and help and the R site
search turn up no matches for this word.  

As memory.size and memory.limit indicate, I'm way below my limit (but,
I grant that maybe windows won't give R any more memory...).   In my
next run, I'll ask to scan fewer lines, but I thought it worth asking
the group if this 'Encodebuf' error meant anything different than the
standard "can't allocate xxxxx bytes" message. (btw, if you are confused
that scanning only 2 lines would max out my memory... I'm scanning two
long lines from 36 different connections so it does add up).
_              
platform i386-pc-mingw32
arch     i386           
os       mingw32        
system   i386, mingw32  
status                  
major    2              
minor    0.1            
year     2004           
month    11             
day      15             
language R  

Thanks.

Tim Howard
Brian Ripley
#
On Wed, 9 Mar 2005, Tim Howard wrote:

            

      
      
      
    

        
Try the source code, specifically that for R_AllocStringBuffer.

            

      
      
      
    

        
Yes, in that it is a direct call to malloc so no gc() takes place.
In any case, you have run out of memory and this is perfectly possible if 
they are long lines since scan reads a line at a time into memory.