Antoine Pitrou <pit...@free.fr> added the comment: The reason is that users expect gc.collect() to make its best to diminish memory use. Clearing free lists can allow deallocting some arenas which otherwise would still contain some used memory blocks. As the comment says:
/* Clear all free lists * All free lists are cleared during the collection of the highest generation. * Allocated items in the free list may keep a pymalloc arena occupied. * Clearing the free lists may give back memory to the OS earlier. */ Full collections (collections of the oldest generation) are rather rare, so the performance impact is probably minimal, and it helps reduce memory fragmentation from time to time (which can produce significant effect as shown in Matthias' example). ---------- nosy: +pitrou _______________________________________ Python tracker <rep...@bugs.python.org> <http://bugs.python.org/issue6695> _______________________________________ _______________________________________________ Python-bugs-list mailing list Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-bugs-list/archive%40mail-archive.com
