Thanks to Dr. Ripley and Dr. Murdoch for the workaround and the solution to the problem with sub() and gsub() memory problem.
Now, with the perl=TRUE option added it works perfect (with the full database)! alumnos$AL_NUME_ID<-gsub("(^ +)|( +$)","",alumnos$AL_NUME_ID,perl=TRUE) I am going to test it with the patched version, that seems to work without this addition, but acording to Dr. Ripley with this option it is faster even in the patched version. Thank you very much for your help. Kenneth ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.