Searching for solution: Severe memory leak, HELP!

[Randy Young]

Sirs,

I have a very large Python application squarely in my lap, that's
leaking almost 20mb of main memory an hour!

I spent most of last night looking through various postings, and not
surprisingly, I'm wondering if I have a "circular reference" at work.
Specifically, something happening with the heavy use of the "exec"
library call.

Here's a code snippet, can anyone see anything grievously wrong? I
understand that we may need to look at WHAT is being "exec'd", but I
thought this might be a place to start...


---- CODE BEGINS

			
#import the module, then execute the probe
  where = 'import'
  win32event.WaitForSingleObject(self.iSemaphore, win32event.INFINITE)
    try:
      exec ("import %s" % probeInfo['ImportName'])
    except Exception, e:
      ret = "Import error on " + str(probeInfo['ImportName']) + " " +
str(e)
      self.ExceptOut(e, 'Exception importing Probe ID ' +
str(probeInfo['ID']))
    win32event.ReleaseSemaphore(self.iSemaphore, 1)

    if (ret == None):			
      where = 'exec'
      try:
	s = "ret = %s.%s (probeInfo)" % (probeInfo['ImportName'],
probeInfo['Invoke'])
        exec (s)

# ... much more yada-yada ...

---- CODE ENDS
     
As you can see there are "exec(s)" all over the place in the module,
one mistake would be magnified many times! I'm trying to understand if
I should be forcing a garbage collection or some other obvious thing?

Thanks in advance for the consideration of a reply.

Regard,

Randy