[Pythonmac-SIG] memory allocation issue

[Bob Ippolito]

On Jul 30, 2005, at 4:27 AM, Chris Fonnesbeck wrote:

> I have a Bayesian simulation package, PyMC, that I run on OSX 10.4
> using either Python 2.3.5 or the ActiveState 2.4. It essentially
> generates long sample arrays of parameter values, which it then
> summarizes at the end (I am using Numeric arrays). However, after a
> simulation of only 80K iterations (for about 7 parameters), I start
> running into memory allocation problems:
>
> python(22156,0xa000ef98) malloc: *** vm_allocate(size=1400324096)
> failed (error code=3)
> python(22156,0xa000ef98) malloc: *** error: can't allocate region
> python(22156,0xa000ef98) malloc: *** set a breakpoint in  
> szone_error to debug

I imagine that the issue here is related to the following:
http://bob.pythonmac.org/archives/2005/01/01/realloc-doesnt/

I suggest taking a look for code that creates big objects, resizes  
them to be smaller, and keeps them around for a bit.  The networking  
code in Python did this for strings in the networking code for a  
while (you could probably find it by searching for vm_allocate on  
python-dev archives).

-bob