[R] max-nsize, cons : what do they all mean?

[Saptarshi Guha]

Hello R users,
I had recently run an R session where a particular function ran
several thousand times, i think into the hundreds of thousands.
I got this error related to cons cells, which I fixed by starting
(actually Rserve) with the --max-nsize=1G option.

I read the help page, but didn't quite understand it.  What does the
option do and why did I initially run into an error  ?
>From man R
--max-nsize

Set max number of cons cells to N

Why should there be a maximum?

Thanks for your time
Saptarshi Guha