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

I try to keep the amount of objects small when working in a larger project with a lot of intermediate steps. So instead of creating many unique objects called

dataframe-> step1 -> step2 -> step3 -> result

raster-> multipliedRast -> meanRastF -> sqrtRast -> resultRast

I work with temporary objects that I call temp.

dataframe -> temp -> temp -> temp -> result

Which leaves me with less intermediate files and more overview.

raster  <- raster('file.tif')
temp <- raster * 10
temp <- mean(temp)
resultRast <- sqrt(temp)

To save more memory I can simply remove temp when no longer needed.

rm(temp)

If I need several intermediate files, I use temp1, temp2, temp3.

For testing I use test, test2, ...