I know this, but my question is what does gc.collect do which results in the c library to free memory? Usually it is because of unreferenced objects in a cycle or something, but here that doesn't seem to be the case.
On Tuesday, March 19, 2013 9:32:27 PM UTC+5:30, Dave Angel wrote: > On 03/19/2013 11:47 AM, Bodhi wrote: > > > I have a python process that does some operations and is supposed to > > release memory after those. The issue is that memory is not released (as > > seen through top). So I do a gc.collect() to see if there is any cycle etc. > > Immediately after doing the collect memory usage drops as expected, but > > strangely gc.collect() returns 0. > > > This means I cannot find out what the problem is by setting the debug > > option on gc which is what I usually do to figure out issues like this. > > > > > > Maybe its that my understanding about it is incorrect, but if gc.collect > > returned 0, how come some memory was freed? > > > > > > > To put it simply, top won't in general show you that things are freed. > > The C libraries for malloc and free will reuse the memory, but not > > usually release it to the operating system. So it's not usually going > > to show up in 'top.' > > > > There was a long thread on this quite recently, but I can't seem to find > > it right now. > > > > > > -- > > DaveA -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
