Tracking down a memory leak

[Alex Martelli]

Kip Macy wrote:

> I have a long running python program that typically uses 6-7MB. It can
> happily run for days without any problems, but periodically it will
> balloon and use up all available memory and swap. I'm aware that the
> presence of circular reference can defeat garbage collection. Are there

Only if the instances involved in a reference loop have __del__ methods.

In this case, the garbage collector does still collect them, and puts them
in list gc.garbage, but cannot determine a safe order in which to run the
__del__ methods and thus cannot finalize the objects.

> any recommended utilities or methods for determining what data structures
> are using up all available memory?

import gc and look at gc.garbage.  You may solve the problem, not just
by removing the circular references, but also by removing __del__ methods
and by using weak references, see module weakref.


Alex