Freeing memory

[Jeremy Bowers]

Siegfried Gonzi wrote:
> I just start the script from the idle editor: 'Run script'.
> 
> I even tried to use del(list1), del(list2),... but it won't help. I also
> write the results to a file (and not to the output screen) in order not
> to interference the calculation.

You may have some cyclic references in your dataset. What version of 
Python are you using?

IDLE always has the same Python interpreter instance. If you can run the 
script with no parameters like that, I'd re-recommend running directly 
from a command line or from a double-click on some script file (as Steve 
Holden did). Then there's no chance that Python will hold the memory 
after execution (or the OS wouldn't be doing it's job).

The alternative is to figure out what's going on and make careful use of 
  weak references and more careful memory handling; just making sure to 
run in a seperate instance should be enough.