R help - Oct 1999 - memory efficiency in R

I'm trying to answer a question from a student about memory use in R
(I won't go into the details right here).

  I have a really vague memory of having read a document, possibly by
Venables or Ripley, discussing the awfulness of memory allocation in
S-PLUS, and giving (in the context of a bootstrapping analysis of shoe
size data??) some general strategies for conserving memory in S-PLUS.  I
can't locate this discussion any more: it's not in any versions of
"Notes
on S-Plus" or "Notes on R" I can get my hands on.  It might be in
one of
the S books (V&R, blue book, "Statistical Models in S") but I
don't have
access to any of them right now.  I realize that memory usage issues will
be somewhat different in S-PLUS and R (and possibly in later versions of
S-PLUS), but I still the discussion might be useful.

  Does this ring any bells for anyone?

 thanks,
    Ben Bolker

--------------------------------------------
Ben Bolker                                  bolker at zoo.ufl.edu
Zoology Department, University of Florida   http://www.zoo.ufl.edu/bolker
318 Carr Hall/Box 118525                    tel: (352) 392-5697
Gainesville, FL 32611-8525                  fax: (352) 392-3704

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Ben Bolker <ben at zoo.ufl.edu> writes:
>   I have a really vague memory of having read a document, possibly by
> Venables or Ripley, discussing the awfulness of memory allocation in
> S-PLUS, and giving (in the context of a bootstrapping analysis of shoe
> size data??) some general strategies for conserving memory in S-PLUS.  I
...
>   Does this ring any bells for anyone?
Ripley, in the S FAQ, http://lib.stat.cmu.edu/S/faq (not that I could
remember that, but a fulltext search on 'memory' in the s-news search
engine ferreted it out soon enough.)

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