R help - Dec 2010 - R question: memory usage

Hi

I have a large R progress that that is constently running into memory
issues, I am trying to rewrite some of the code to make more efficeint
However, one thing I have found is that the memory usage shown by gc() is
very different from what i see from unix termilnal


Garbage collection 2047 = 1398+243+406 (level 2) ...
12.4 Mbytes of cons cells used (3%)
998.6 Mbytes of vectors used (23%)
            used  (Mb) gc trigger   (Mb)  max used   (Mb)
Ncells    231884  12.4    8140556  434.8  12719620  679.4
Vcells 130881306 998.6  572307468 4366.4 713657158 5444.8

vs

  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
26291 s_edge    25   0 2883m 8.2g 4276 R 99.7  48.0  10:35.31 R
Am i missing something here?

Thanks a lot for the help
Simon

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