How to check the amount of RAM in R

r ram
Sacha Epskamp picture Sacha Epskamp · Jun 23, 2011 · Viewed 27.3k times · Source

I want to make a function that imports data in different numbers of batches depending on how much RAM is available on someones system. But how can I find the amount of available RAM in R? I can use memory.size() but that only works for Windows.

Answer

Dirk Eddelbuettel picture Dirk Eddelbuettel · Jun 23, 2011

Given the warnings concerning platform-dependency discussed in the earlier comment, you could for example parse /proc/meminfo on Linux:

$ grep MemFree /proc/meminfo 
MemFree:          573660 kB
$ awk '/MemFree/ {print $2}' /proc/meminfo 
565464

You could try the second approach via system(..., intern=TRUE), or even via a pipe connection.

Edit some 5+ years later: In R, and just following what the previous paragraph hinted at:

R> memfree <- as.numeric(system("awk '/MemFree/ {print $2}' /proc/meminfo", 
+                               intern=TRUE))
R> memfree
[1] 3342480
R>

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