Hmm, not sure what happened. Not sure what you mean by memory problems, but I've never seen flakiness in a session this short. Perhaps something in your earlier session was accidentally a control character or something. Keep an eye out for it and I will too.
Here's a full session I tried out on linux:
$ arc
arc> (def printlst (thelist) (if (is thelist nil) (prn "") (do (prn (car thelist)) (printlst (cdr thelist)))))
#<procedure: printlst>
arc> (def readit () (drain (readline (stdin))))
#<procedure: readit>
arc> (= alist (readit))
ARR(1)="PARSE ; PARSE OUTPUT OF ^%RFIND INTO RSD/RTN/TAG"
ARR(2)=" N ARR,FND,I,RSD,RTN,STOP,TXT"
ARR(3)=" W !!,"PASTE""
ARR(4)=" F R !,X:15 Q:'$T S ARR($I(ARR))=X"
ARR(5)=" K RSDS"
("" "ARR(1)=\"PARSE ; PARSE OUTPUT OF ^%RFIND INTO RSD/RTN/TAG\"" "" "ARR(2)=\" N ARR,FND,I,RSD,RTN,STOP,TXT\"" "" "ARR(3)=\" W !!,\"PASTE\"\"" "" "ARR(4)=\" F R !,X:15 Q:'$T S ARR($I(ARR))=X\"" "" "ARR(5)=\" K RSDS\"")
arc> (printlst alist)
ARR(1)="PARSE ; PARSE OUTPUT OF ^%RFIND INTO RSD/RTN/TAG"
ARR(2)=" N ARR,FND,I,RSD,RTN,STOP,TXT"
ARR(3)=" W !!,"PASTE""
ARR(4)=" F R !,X:15 Q:'$T S ARR($I(ARR))=X"
ARR(5)=" K RSDS"
""
arc> (= codes (obj "Boston" 'bos "San Francisco" 'sfo "Paris" 'cdg))
#hash(("Boston" . bos) ("Paris" . cdg) ("San Francisco" . sfo))
arc>
