How to get rdd count() without double evaluation of the RDD?

[Wang, Ningjun (LNG-NPV)]

I have a rdd that is expensive to compute. I want to save it as object file and 
also print the count. How can I avoid double computation of the RDD?

val rdd = sc.textFile(someFile).map(line => expensiveCalculation(line))

val count = rdd.count()  // this force computation of the rdd
println(count)
rdd.saveAsObjectFile(file2) // this compute the RDD again

I can avoid double computation by using cache

val rdd = sc.textFile(someFile).map(line => expensiveCalculation(line))
rdd.cache()
val count = rdd.count()
println(count)
rdd.saveAsObjectFile(file2) // this compute the RDD again

This only compute rdd once. However the rdd has millions of items and will 
cause out of memory.

Question: how can I avoid double computation without using cache?


Ningjun