Is it possible to reduce or clear the size of R's global string cache?

Question

This is related to my previous question freeing up memory in R

and was wondering if it was possible to reduce or clear the size of R's global string cache?...I have heard that it can only go up?

If it is possible, how do you do it?

Thx

Answer 1

I don't believe that is true. It looks like the garbage collector code marks unused CHARSXPs (the individual cached components of character vectors) and removes them.