Tracking down memory leaks?

[mensanator at aol.com]

MKoool wrote:
> I have an application with one function called "compute", which given a
> filename, goes through that file and performs various statistical
> analyses.  It uses arrays extensively and loops alot.  it prints the
> results of it's statistical significance tests to standard out.  Since
> the compute function returns and I think no variables of global scope
> are being used, I would think that when it does, all memory returns
> back to the operating system.
>
> Instead, what I see is that every iteration uses several megs more.
> For example, python uses 52 megs when starting out, it goes through
> several iterations and I'm suddenly using more than 500 megs of ram.
>
> Does anyone have any pointers on how to figure out what I'm doing
> wrong?

Are you importing any third party modules? It's not unheard of that
someone else's code has a memory leak.

> 
> Thanks,
> mohan