Re: Wierd behavior of gc.collect

Newsgroups	comp.lang.python
Date	2013-03-19 09:36 -0700
References	<76cc4613-8086-4b36-a8bd-8ad0f21a19e0@googlegroups.com> <mailman.3525.1363708963.2939.python-list@python.org>
Subject	Re: Wierd behavior of gc.collect
From	Bodhi <amitdev@gmail.com>
Message-ID	<mailman.3530.1363713588.2939.python-list@python.org> (permalink)

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I know this, but my question is what does gc.collect do which results in the c library to free memory? Usually it is because of unreferenced objects in a cycle or something, but here that doesn't seem to be the case.

On Tuesday, March 19, 2013 9:32:27 PM UTC+5:30, Dave Angel wrote:
> On 03/19/2013 11:47 AM, Bodhi wrote:
> 
> > I have a python process that does some operations and is supposed to release memory after those. The issue is that memory is not released (as seen through top). So I do a gc.collect() to see if there is any cycle etc. Immediately after doing the collect memory usage drops as expected, but strangely gc.collect() returns 0.
> 
> > This means I cannot find out what the problem is by setting the debug option on gc which is what I usually do to figure out issues like this.
> 
> >
> 
> > Maybe its that my understanding about it is incorrect, but if gc.collect returned 0, how come some memory was freed?
> 
> >
> 
> 
> 
> To put it simply, top won't in general show you that things are freed. 
> 
> The C libraries for malloc and free will reuse the memory, but not 
> 
> usually release it to the operating system.  So it's not usually going 
> 
> to show up in 'top.'
> 
> 
> 
> There was a long thread on this quite recently, but I can't seem to find 
> 
> it right now.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> 
> DaveA

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Thread

Wierd behavior of gc.collect Bodhi <amitdev@gmail.com> - 2013-03-19 08:47 -0700
  Re: Wierd behavior of gc.collect Dave Angel <davea@davea.name> - 2013-03-19 12:02 -0400
    Re: Wierd behavior of gc.collect Bodhi <amitdev@gmail.com> - 2013-03-19 09:36 -0700
      Re: Wierd behavior of gc.collect Dave Angel <davea@davea.name> - 2013-03-19 13:13 -0400
        Re: Wierd behavior of gc.collect Bodhi <amitdev@gmail.com> - 2013-03-19 21:51 -0700
        Re: Wierd behavior of gc.collect Bodhi <amitdev@gmail.com> - 2013-03-19 21:51 -0700
    Re: Wierd behavior of gc.collect Bodhi <amitdev@gmail.com> - 2013-03-19 09:36 -0700

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