Error: vector memory exhausted (limit reached?) R 3.5.0 macOS

Question

I've been working for a while with a number of large files containing gene expression data, and I've recently run into an issue with loading that data into R, after upgrading to R 3.5.0. After using about 8GB of memory (my mac has 16GB of RAM), if I try to read in another file, I get the following error:

Error: vector memory exhausted (limit reached?)

I found a previous post (Error: vector memory exhausted (limit reached?)) suggesting I try to set the environmental variable R_MAX_VSIZE to a higher value, so I tried the following:

Sys.setenv(R_MAX_VSIZE = 16e9)

However, I still got the same error. Am I not setting the environmental Variable correctly? is there something that I'm missing?

Session info:

R version 3.5.0 (2018-04-23)
Platform: x86_64-apple-darwin15.6.0 (64-bit)
Running under: macOS High Sierra 10.13.5

Matrix products: default
BLAS: /System/Library/Frameworks/Accelerate.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/vecLib.framework/Versions/A/libBLAS.dylib
LAPACK: /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/3.5/Resources/lib/libRlapack.dylib

locale:[1] en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8/C/en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base     

other attached packages: [1] data.table_1.11.4

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
[1] compiler_3.5.0 tools_3.5.0   

Answer 1

For those using Rstudio, I've found that setting Sys.setenv('R_MAX_VSIZE'=32000000000) only works on the command line, and that setting that parameter while using Rstudio does not prevent this error:

Error: vector memory exhausted (limit reached?)

After doing some more reading, I found this thread, which clarifies the problem with Rstudio, and identifies a solution, shown below:

Step 1: Open terminal,

Step 2:

cd ~
touch .Renviron
open .Renviron

Step 3: Save the following as the first line of .Renviron:

R_MAX_VSIZE=100Gb 

Note: This limit includes both physical and virtual memory; so setting _MAX_VSIZE=16Gb on a machine with 16Gb of physical memory may not prevent this error. You may have to play with this parameter, depending on the specs of your machine