[Simon Wittber] >> According to the above post: >> a) If the allocation is > 256 bytes, call the system malloc. >> b) If the allocation is < 256, use its own malloc implementation, which >> allocates memory in 256 kB chunks and never releases it. >> >> I imagine this means that large memory allocations are eventually >> released back to the operating system. However, in my case, this >> appears to be not happening.
Large chunks are returned to the platform C when they become unreferenced. More below. [Stephen Thorne] > There was a recent patch posted to python-dev list which allows python > to release memory back to the operating system once the 256kb chunk is > no longer used. Nope, the patch may return such a 256KB chunk to the platform C library's free() function. That's never what someone actually means by the vague "released back to the operating system", and whether the latter might happen is another platform-dependent (OS + C library + specific versions of each) can of worms. > I'm not saying running a bleeding edge CVS HEAD python plus untested > development patches is going to be a solution for you in the short > term, but I just wanted to mention it because I'm excited about this > limitation disappearing in python :). It's a necessary first step, anyway. Alas, there's no way to take a second step without messy platform-specific code (when does your favorite platform C free() "release memory back" to your favorite operating system? to "do something about that", exact knowledge of platform details is necessary). -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
