Error messages are an unfortunate part of programming, those that result from exceeding the available memory can be more than a nuisance, but a serious problem when they result from overextending the physical memory of the computer. The vector memory exhausted error is this type of error message.
Circumstances of this error message.
Are two main circumstances that can cause this error to happen. The first one is insufficient memory allocation by R Studio itself. The second is a lack of physical memory on your computer. Even with these issues, you will have to be dealing with really large amounts of data for this error message to show up.
Reason for this error message.
The reason why this error message occurs is simply that the program is running out of space to put more data. Whether the reason is the allocation or an actual lack of memory, the program simply runs out of space to put more data. While this is an easy error message to understand, it is a hard one to fix because it may not simply involve tweaking your code to fix or get around the problem.
How to fix this error message.
There are several ways to fix this error message. The simplest fix is to simply to make your file smaller. A couple of ways to do this is to remove duplicates and columns. Another possibility is to remove any data that you will not be using. If the study has a shorter range of time, exclude data that is outside of that time. If there are entire columns of data that you do not use, then go ahead and eliminate them. All of these will reduce the amount of memory needed to hold the data.
If reducing the size of your data does not do the job, then you may want to consider an increase in the size of the physical memory of your computer. Another solution is to keep the data in a database such as SQL where the program accesses it only as needed.
Unfortunately, this problem has no easy copy and paste solution, but requires a lot of effort no matter how you try to solve it. You can solve this problem but not easily. However, it is a chance for your creativity to shine because that is where your solution to this problem will be found.
For: error: vector memory exhausted (limit reached?)