search for: n300000

...dictates a size restriction. There is one list element for each vector and each string and each list element (as well as the list element itself). If you have very large "character" vectors, you might be hitting this limit, but you can increase the limit for this with (for example): R -n300000 (The consumption of one cell per string is perhaps the major memory problem in R - we didn't design it with large problems in mind. It is probably fixable, but it will mean a lot of work). Are you seeing these kinds of values if you gc() immediately at startup? Ross PS: The random "i...