[SciPy-user] ipython memory leak

[Gael Varoquaux]

On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 12:03:48AM +0200, Stéfan van der Walt wrote:
> On 10/04/2008, Keflavich <keflavich at gmail.com> wrote:
> > OK, thanks, I'll forward my message there.  I wasn't sure which
> >  package was causing the issue, but if you both think it's ipython I'll
> >  go to those groups.

> I have a suspicion they'll tell you that IPython can't leak memory
> (other than what Python leaks by itself), since it is written in pure
> Python.

Sure it can: references that do not get destroyed.

Actually iptyhon does leak memory by default: the result of each command
you enter are stored in the _%i variable, where %i is the number of the
prompt. And if you return huge results without storing them in a
variable that will get garbage collected, you leak memory quite badly.
That's a feature, not a bug (:-P), but it is easy to work around, simply
delete those variables.

Cheers,

Gaël