Report the Space Allocated for an Object

Description

Provides an estimate of the memory that is being used to store an R object.

Usage

object.size(x)

Arguments

Details

Exactly which parts of the memory allocation should be attributed to which object is not clear-cut. This function merely provides a rough indication: it should be reasonably accurate for atomic vectors, but does not detect if elements of a list are shared, for example. (As from R 2.0.0 sharing amongst elements of a character vector is taken into account.)

The calculation is of the size of the object, and excludes the space needed to store its name in the symbol table.

Object sizes are larger on 64-bit platforms than 32-bit ones, but will very likely be the same on different platforms with the same word length.

Value

An estimate of the memory allocation attributable to the object, in bytes.

See Also

Memory-limits for the design limitations on object size.

Examples

object.size(letters)
object.size(ls)
## find the 10 largest objects in base
z <- sapply(ls("package:base"), function(x) object.size(get(x, envir=NULL)))
as.matrix(rev(sort(z))[1:10])