memory leak on solaris 2.5.1 / 2.6 ?

[Wolfgang Grafen]

Following problem:

starting the Python interpreter in interactive mode about 2.6 MB will
be allocated. Issuing following command

>>> x = "1001" * 5000000

will occupy about 22 MB.

>>> del x

doesn't decrease the amount of allocated Memory.


I discovered that problem when running a Python script allocating
more than 1 GB Memory after reading from several files.

With Suse-Linux the memory will be properly freed on a Intel PC and
a pre-compiled Python 1.5.2 version.

I tried it with a standard configured Python version 1.5.2 as well
a thread-enabled version with many extension modules compiled in
with gcc version 2.7.2 on Solaris 2.5.1.

The same effect also occured with Python version 1.6a compiled as
described above.

Running Python 1.5.2 and 1.6.a compiled as described above from
Solaris 2.6 also showed the same problem.

Is there any solution for that?

Thanks

Wolfgang