[Skip Montanaro]
I did try that when the problem was first raised. I just tried it again. It did have a positive effect:
w/ threads and w/o pymalloc:
user system elapsed CPU 7.64 0.72 0:09.73 85% 7.86 0.45 0:08.66 95% 7.66 0.66 0:08.32 99%
w/o threads and w/ pymalloc:
user system elapsed CPU 5.44 0.58 0:06.85 87% 5.57 0.46 0:06.02 100% 5.57 0.45 0:06.02 99%
Skip, I think this is irrelevant to the OP's problem. You're telling us you can save a few seconds running test_longexp on a box with barely enough memory to run it at all. Barbara is worried about shaving *hours* off it on a box with gobs of memory to spare. Still, I expect pymalloc will fix her problem (since malloc is the only suspect on the list, it better <wink>).