Garbage collection

[Tom Wright]

Hi all

I suspect I may be missing something vital here, but Python's garbage
collection doesn't seem to work as I expect it to.  Here's a small test
program which shows the problem on python 2.4 and 2.5:

$ python2.5
Python 2.5 (release25-maint, Dec  9 2006, 15:33:01) 
[GCC 4.1.2 20061115 (prerelease) (Debian 4.1.1-20)] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> 

(at this point, Python is using 15MB)

>>> a = range(int(1e7))
>>>

(at this point, Python is using 327MB)

>>> a = None
>>>

(at this point, Python is using 251MB)

>>> import gc
>>> gc.collect()
0
>>>

(at this point, Python is using 252MB)


Is there something I've forgotten to do? Why is Python still using such a
lot of memory?


Thanks!

-- 
I'm at CAMbridge, not SPAMbridge