Python 2.4.3 array memory leak

[danmcleran at yahoo.com]

On May 7, 3:47 pm, "danmcle... at yahoo.com" <danmcle... at yahoo.com>
wrote:
> On May 7, 3:31 pm, "danmcle... at yahoo.com" <danmcle... at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
>
>
>
> > I am using the array module to instantiate many arrays in my
> > application. It seems like there is a memory leak in there somewhere.
> > Can anyone confim this and let me know what, if anything, I can do
> > about it? I am using Fedora Core 5 Linux:
>
> > import commands
> > import array
> > import itertools
> > import sys
>
> > from itertools import repeat
>
> > print '*** before ***'
> > print commands.getoutput('cat /proc/meminfo').split('\n')[1]
> > for i in range(100):
> >     a = array.array('I', repeat(0, int(2E6)))
> >     del a
> > print '*** after ***'
> > print commands.getoutput('cat /proc/meminfo').split('\n')[1]
>
> > Output:
> > *** before ***
> > MemFree:       1459772 kB
> > *** after ***
> > MemFree:       1457688 kB
>
> I hate to reply to my own thread but I wanted to update it. I tried
> the same code using ctypes arrays and see no memory leak:
>
> import commands
> import array
> import itertools
> import sys
> import ctypes
>
> from itertools import repeat
> from ctypes import *
>
> print '*** before ***'
> print commands.getoutput('cat /proc/meminfo').split('\n')[1]
> for i in range(100):
>     a = ARRAY(c_uint, int(2E6))
>     del a
> print '*** after ***'
> print commands.getoutput('cat /proc/meminfo').split('\n')[1]
>
> *** before ***
> MemFree:       1416364 kB
> *** after ***
> MemFree:       1416364 kB


The above code was not correct. I actually do see a memory leak when
using ctypes arrays also. What is going on?


import commands
import array
import itertools
import sys
import ctypes

from itertools import repeat
from ctypes import *

print '*** before ***'
print commands.getoutput('cat /proc/meminfo').split('\n')[1]
for i in range(100):
    a = ARRAY(c_uint, int(2E6))()
    del a
print '*** after ***'
print commands.getoutput('cat /proc/meminfo').split('\n')[1]

Output
*** before ***
MemFree:       1564096 kB
*** after ***
MemFree:       1556884 kB