How can you copy (clone) a string?

[Fredrik Lundh]

Peter.Rupp at ual.com wrote:
> Earlier I asked a question about cloning python strings, but neglected 
> to say why I needed it.
>
> What I'm trying to do is determine how large a user process can be 
> before it runs out of memory.   This is useful in debugging kernel 
> parameter issues in our performance lab where our tests are running out 
> of memory and I have to provide empirical proof that the kernel parms 
> are set correctly and that an example program can prove it.   

oh, now you're telling us ;-)

forget about strings.  use the array module instead (it basically
implements mutable strings).  here's an example:

import array

bloat = [array.array('c', '*'*1000000)]

while 1:
    print len(bloat), "..."
    # consume another meg
    bloat.append(bloat[0][:])

</F>