Where'd my memory go? (was Re: [Python-Dev] Dictionary sparseness)

[Skip Montanaro]

    Tim> Stuff all these things miss (even pymalloc, because it isn't asked
    Tim> for the memory) include the immortal and unbounded int freelist,
    Tim> the I&U float FL, and the immortal but bounded frameobject FL.  Do,
    Tim> e.g., range(2000000) (as someone did on c.l.py last week), and
    Tim> about 24MB "goes missing" until the program shuts down (it's
    Tim> sitting in the int FL).  Note that pymalloc never returns its
    Tim> "arenas" to the system either.

These shortcomings could be remedied by suitable inspection functions added
to sys for debug builds.

This leads me to wonder, has anyone measured the cost of deleting the int
and float free lists when pymalloc is enabled?  I wonder how unbearable it
would be.

Skip