Tricks to manage the available memory in an R session

Question

What tricks do people use to manage the available memory of an interactive R session? I use the functions below [based on postings by Petr Pikal and David Hinds to the r-he

Answer 1

Saw this on a twitter post and think it's an awesome function by Dirk! Following on from JD Long's answer, I would do this for user friendly reading:

# improved list of objects
.ls.objects <- function (pos = 1, pattern, order.by,
                        decreasing=FALSE, head=FALSE, n=5) {
    napply <- function(names, fn) sapply(names, function(x)
                                         fn(get(x, pos = pos)))
    names <- ls(pos = pos, pattern = pattern)
    obj.class <- napply(names, function(x) as.character(class(x))[1])
    obj.mode <- napply(names, mode)
    obj.type <- ifelse(is.na(obj.class), obj.mode, obj.class)
    obj.prettysize <- napply(names, function(x) {
                           format(utils::object.size(x), units = "auto") })
    obj.size <- napply(names, object.size)
    obj.dim <- t(napply(names, function(x)
                        as.numeric(dim(x))[1:2]))
    vec <- is.na(obj.dim)[, 1] & (obj.type != "function")
    obj.dim[vec, 1] <- napply(names, length)[vec]
    out <- data.frame(obj.type, obj.size, obj.prettysize, obj.dim)
    names(out) <- c("Type", "Size", "PrettySize", "Length/Rows", "Columns")
    if (!missing(order.by))
        out <- out[order(out[[order.by]], decreasing=decreasing), ]
    if (head)
        out <- head(out, n)
    out
}

# shorthand
lsos <- function(..., n=10) {
    .ls.objects(..., order.by="Size", decreasing=TRUE, head=TRUE, n=n)
}

lsos()

Which results in something like the following:

                      Type   Size PrettySize Length/Rows Columns
pca.res                 PCA 790128   771.6 Kb          7      NA
DF               data.frame 271040   264.7 Kb        669      50
factor.AgeGender   factanal  12888    12.6 Kb         12      NA
dates            data.frame   9016     8.8 Kb        669       2
sd.                 numeric   3808     3.7 Kb         51      NA
napply             function   2256     2.2 Kb         NA      NA
lsos               function   1944     1.9 Kb         NA      NA
load               loadings   1768     1.7 Kb         12       2
ind.sup             integer    448  448 bytes        102      NA
x                 character     96   96 bytes          1      NA

NOTE: The main part I added was (again, adapted from JD's answer) :

obj.prettysize <- napply(names, function(x) {
                           print(object.size(x), units = "auto") })