Memory control

[João Rodrigues]

I need to functions which, when applied to large objects, require more 
memory than that available and the system freezes. (It's the csv2cell 
function for file input, but I guess this situation is more general.)

I wonder if there is some function that can get information about the 
amount of RAM available and that currently used by Octave so that the 
program aborts if its memory requirements exceed a certain threshold.

Suggestions are welcome.