On Mon, 19 Oct 2009 00:30:30 -0700, dheeraj wrote: > Hi, a program of mine is being terminated by the OS as it uses too much > memory. I guess this is due to static memory allocation > > I've also tried to use "del" but in vain. Is there any other function > that performs the above operation and frees the allocated memory??
Python uses a ref-counting garbage collector which automatically frees memory when the number of references to each object falls to zero. This is automatic and fast, but it is defeated if you store objects in cycles (e.g. x refers to y, and y refers to x) or if you put everything in globals which never go out of scope. In addition Python has a separate garbage collect which can detect, and break, many cycles. Perhaps you can use the gc module to debug your problem? I would expect in general that Python will fail with a MemoryError exception before the operating system terminates the process for using too much memory. What are you doing in your program? What version of Python are you using and what OS? You need to give more information for us to be more helpful. -- Steven -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
