Big Data and a fwf files reading with filters I have searched at all possible areas and haven't been able to find the solution to my problem. I am hoping that someone here would be able to help me out. If you feel that this question is already answered, I would appreciate the link.

I am using R3.2.2 64 bit on a windows 7 machine. I have a fixed width file of size 1.9 GB and has approx 18 million records in it. I need to read the file based on a filter condition RecordID = "Cast". All my attempts to read the file.dat has failed due to memory constraints. Any help on how to use package ff for this purpose?  

I am open to other methods also.
Try the LaF package. See this:
https://stackoverflow.com/a/24716798/1427069

Once you create a laf object, you can create a data frame or data table using your row filter condition.

library(LaF)
laf &lt;- laf_open_fwf("foo.dat",
                    column_widths = colWidths, 
                    column_types=rep("character", length(colWidths)),
                    column_names = colNames)
castData &lt;- laf[RecordID == "Cast", ]