On 03/19/2013 12:36 PM, Bodhi wrote:
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.
As I said, python calls the C free() function, whether it's when an object's ref-count goes to zero, or whether it's during a gc call, where circular refs are freed.
But free() does not necessarily release the memory to the OS. And the times it does depends on which C library is being used, and what OS it's running on.
If the freed memory affects top in some situations, it's a C library detail. I've written a replacement C allocator in the past for Windows that used a different scheme for blocks over a certain threshold, and when those blocks were freed, it gave them back to the OS. But such blocks were multiples of 64k, which was the increment for VirtualAlloc.
-- DaveA -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
