[R] memory tops out at 1.84gb on OS X 10.4 machine w/ 5GB ram

[Ken Termiso]

Hi all,

Sorry if this is a dumb question, but I am on 10.4 with R2.2, and when 
loading a big text file (~500MB) with scan(file, what=character) I am 
throwing malloc errors that say I am out of memory...I have 5GB on this 
machine, and Activity Monitor tells me R is only up to ~1.84GB both times 
this has happened (running from terminal)...

I am wondering why this is happening when I still have >2GB of free memory 
waiting to be used...?

Any advice would be much obliged,
Ken