I was trying to read a large .csv file (80 colums, 400,000 rows, size of about 200MB). I used scan(), R 2.3.1 on Windows XP. My computer is AMD 2000+ and has 512MB ram. It sometimes freezes my PC, sometimes just shuts down R quitely. Is there a way (option, function) to better handle large files? Seemingly SAS can deal with it with no problem, but I just persuaded my professor transfering to R, so it is quite disappointing. Please help, thank you. [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
You might consider processing this is pieces. If I assume that this is numeric data, then 'after' conversion this will take up 256MB of RAM which is 1/2 your real memory. This means that you will probably not be able to do any processing of the data since you will probably have to make copies of parts of the object at various times. It also assumes that you have all the 512MB really available to your program; there is the operating system and other applications running. Do you have to have all the data in memory at one time? If so, consider getting a 64-bit version of R and at least 2GB of RAM to be on the safe side. You could also put the data in a database and then read in only the columns that are needed. On 8/11/06, T Mu <muster@gmail.com> wrote:> > I was trying to read a large .csv file (80 colums, 400,000 rows, size of > about 200MB). I used scan(), R 2.3.1 on Windows XP. My computer is AMD > 2000+ > and has 512MB ram. > > It sometimes freezes my PC, sometimes just shuts down R quitely. > > Is there a way (option, function) to better handle large files? > > Seemingly SAS can deal with it with no problem, but I just persuaded my > professor transfering to R, so it is quite disappointing. > > Please help, thank you. > > [[alternative HTML version deleted]] > > ______________________________________________ > R-help@stat.math.ethz.ch 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 you are trying to solve? [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
On 8/11/2006 8:50 PM, T Mu wrote:> I was trying to read a large .csv file (80 colums, 400,000 rows, size of > about 200MB). I used scan(), R 2.3.1 on Windows XP. My computer is AMD 2000+ > and has 512MB ram.You should get R-patched; there were some bugs with low memory handling fixed recently: From CHANGES: R could crash when very low on memory. (PR#8981) You should also get more physical memory. 512MB is not much for handling a 200MB of data. You can fairly easily benefit from increasing up to 2 GB, and will benefit (with some work) if you have even more, up to 4 GB. Duncan Murdoch> > It sometimes freezes my PC, sometimes just shuts down R quitely. > > Is there a way (option, function) to better handle large files? > > Seemingly SAS can deal with it with no problem, but I just persuaded my > professor transfering to R, so it is quite disappointing. > > Please help, thank you. > > [[alternative HTML version deleted]] > > ______________________________________________ > R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch 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.