The memory manager in the latest Python release 2.5 does return freed memory to the underlying system, if possible. For more details, see the 5th bullet on this page
<http://docs.python.org/whatsnew/ports.html>. /Jean Brouwers [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > The workaround I went with made use of the shelve module and > calls to gc.collect() to cap the memory consumed by the Python > allocator. It was a bit intrusive but it got the job done. > > Would a method in the gc module that released memory to malloc > be something that could get added to Python? Or are there some > reasons why allowing that would be a bad idea? > > Regards, > Iker > > P.S. > This may be a repeat of an earlier message - it seems that > google groups may have discarded my earlier post. > > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > Is there any way to get Python to release memory back to the > > C allocator? I'm currently running a script that goes through > > the following steps: > > > > 1) Creates a very large number of Python objects to produce > > a relatively small data structure that sits in a C extension. > > The Python objects consume quite a bit of memory. > > > > 2) Releases all the Python objects. > > > > 3) Invokes a function of said C extension for further > > processing. This step needs as much memory as possible. > > > > I'd like step 2 to return memory to the C allocator so that it > > is available to the extension in step 3 (which uses malloc). > > > > Regards, > > Iker Arizmendi -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
