[Baypiggies] Discussion for newbies/beginner night talks - test results

[Kelly Yancey]

Shannon -jj Behrens wrote:
> 
> I saw a talk at PyCon two years ago that said that Python would never
> give memory back to the OS.  That's probably changed, but I'd check
> first.
> 

   Only Python 2.5 currently frees memory back to the system.  From 
http://docs.python.org/whatsnew/ports.html:

	Evan Jones's patch to obmalloc, first described in a talk at
	PyCon DC 2005, was applied. Python 2.4 allocated small objects
	in 256K-sized arenas, but never freed arenas. With this patch,
	Python will free arenas when they're empty. The net effect is
	that on some platforms, when you allocate many objects, Python's
	memory usage may actually drop when you delete them and the
	memory may be returned to the operating system. (Implemented by
	Evan Jones, and reworked by Tim Peters.)

   Kelly