[New-bugs-announce] [issue9072] Unloading modules - memleaks?

[Slava]

New submission from Slava <bomboze at gmail.com>:

I don't know whether this is a bug, but my exhaustive search led me to "Python can't really unload modules" from every direction, which I find hard to believe, I don't know where else to go with this.

The problem:

  import gc, sys
  print len(gc.get_objects()) # 4073
  # starting with 4073 objects in memory

  import httplib
  del sys.modules["httplib"]
  del httplib

  # httplib should be unloaded 
  # and garbage collected as it is unreachable

  gc.collect()
  print len(gc.get_objects()) # 6745 
  # 6745 objects in memory (2000+ stray objects)

This applies to almost any module. 
Is this a bug or somehow correctable?

----------
components: None
messages: 108545
nosy: yappie
priority: normal
severity: normal
status: open
title: Unloading modules - memleaks?
type: resource usage
versions: Python 2.6

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Python tracker <report at bugs.python.org>
<http://bugs.python.org/issue9072>
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