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SUMM: Assign() problem

To: s-news@lists.biostat.wustl.edu
Subject: SUMM: Assign() problem
From: Marco Albani <albanim@interchange.ubc.ca>
Date: Fri, 16 Feb 2001 16:09:51 -0800


Thanks to Prof. Ripley and Bert Gunter for answering my query.
Prof. Ripley points out that running a .ssc script effectively sources() it. Because it needs to be able to back out if it fails, it uses quite a bit of memory.

He suggested using

  sqpe < foo.ssc > foo.out

which avoids all the build up (as will Splus /BATCH).

I am happily using Splus /BATCH now, and that's preventing memory build up. I used the assign() function instead of dbwrite(), because dbwrite seems to not properly write the object names, so I can't find them later, even after using synchronize(). dbwrite() seems to not wrtite the object names to the _nonfi file.


The original question was:
>
> Hello,
>
> I have encountered a  problem running scripts in S+ 2000 on Win NT 4.0.
>
> I have a series of lengthy operations that run on large datasets (I
> estimate overall 6+ hours computing time on my PIII 933 MHz). I built an
> .ssc file to run them as a sequence of assignment commands, but when I run
> it S+ takes up more and more memory until it eventually bombs and nothing
> is committed.
>
> Note that this happend using a series of commands in the form:
>
>     east.dem.nw.7.0 <<- par.map.nw(get("east.dem", immediate = T),7,0)
>
> (where par.map.nw is a function that call a C DLL)
>
> I also tried
>
>     assign("east.dem.nw.7.0", par.map.nw(get("east.dem", immediate =
> T),7,0),immediate=T)
>
> or
>
>    dbwrite("d:\\_demconic","east.dem.nw.7.0", par.map.nw(get("east.dem",
> immediate = T),7,0))
>
> In all cases, following S+ with the NT task manager, I can see that memory
> is not freed when each operation is concluded, but only when the .ssc file
> finishes running successfully (in the dbwrite case I don't even seem to be
> able to find the object with its proper name once it has been written to
> the attached database).
>
> Any insight?

Thanks to Prof. Ripley and

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