R help - Aug 2010 - memory use without running gc()

Is there any way to get the current memory used by R without running
gc()?

I'd like to include the memory usage in logging output, but calling gc()
to get that information takes long enough to be noticeable (~ 6 s with ~
20 GB of ram in use), which goes against the point of logging.

Thanks,
Johann

?memory.size

On Fri, Aug 6, 2010 at 1:00 PM, Johann Hibschman <jhibschman at gmail.com>
wrote:
> Is there any way to get the current memory used by R without running
> gc()?
>
> I'd like to include the memory usage in logging output, but calling
gc()
> to get that information takes long enough to be noticeable (~ 6 s with ~
> 20 GB of ram in use), which goes against the point of logging.
>
> Thanks,
> Johann
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide
http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>


-- 
Jim Holtman
Cincinnati, OH
+1 513 646 9390

What is the problem that you are trying to solve?

jim holtman <jholtman at gmail.com> writes:
> ?memory.size
Only works on Windows.  I guess I should have specified; this is on Linux.

Thanks,
Johann

How about asking the operating system, e.g.

### Method 1
## Setup
cmd <- paste("ps -o vsz", Sys.getpid())
## In your logging routine
z <- system(cmd, intern = TRUE)
cat("Virtual size: ", z[2], "\n", sep = "")

### Method 2
## Setup
file <- paste("/proc", Sys.getpid(), "stat", sep =
"/")
what <- vector("list", 44); what[[23]] <- integer(0)
## In your logging routine
vsz <- scan(file, what = what, quiet = TRUE)[[23]]/1024
cat("Virtual size: ", vsz, "\n", sep = "")

### Time the methods
library("rbenchmark")
benchmark(scan = scan(file, what = what, quiet = TRUE)[[23]]/1024,
           system = system(cmd, intern = TRUE),
           columns = c("test", "replications",
"elapsed", "relative"),
order = "relative")
#     test replications elapsed relative
# 1   scan          100   0.015   1.0000
# 2 system          100   2.408 160.5333


The scan method should be plenty fast.  Change as appropriate if your 
definition of memory is different from virtual size.

Hope this helps a little.

Allan


On 06/08/10 19:11, Johann Hibschman wrote:
> jim holtman<jholtman at gmail.com>  writes:
>
>    
>> ?memory.size
>>      
> Only works on Windows.  I guess I should have specified; this is on Linux.
>
> Thanks,
> Johann
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide
http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>