memory leak problem with arrays

[sonjaa]

Serge Orlov wrote:
> sonjaa wrote:
> > Serge Orlov wrote:
> > > sonjaa wrote:
> > > > Hi
> > > >
> > > > I'm new to programming in python and I hope that this is the problem.
> > > >
> > > > I've created a cellular automata program in python with the numpy array
> > > > extensions. After each cycle/iteration the memory used to examine and
> > > > change the array as determined by the transition rules is never freed.
> > > > I've tried using "del" on every variable possible, but that hasn't
> > > > worked.
> > >
> > > Python keeps track of number of references to every object if the
> > > object has more that one reference by the time you use "del" the object
> > > is not freed, only number of references is decremented.
> > >
> > > Print the number of references for all the objects you think should be
> > > freed after each cycle/iteration, if is not equal 2 that means you are
> > > holding extra references to those objects. You can get the number of
> > > references to any object by calling sys.getrefcount(obj)
> >
> > thanks for the info. I used this several variables/objects and
> > discovered that little counters i.e. k = k +1 have many references to
> > them, up tp 10000+.
> > Is there a way to free them?
>
> Although it's looks suspicious, even if you manage to free it you will
> gain only 12 bytes. I think you should concentrate on more fat
> objects ;)


Sent message to the NumPy forum as per Roberts suggestion.
An update after implimenting the suggestions:

After doing this I see that iterative counters used to collect
occurrences
and nested loop counters (ii & jj) as seen in the code example below
are the culprits with the worst ones over 1M:

                 for ii in xrange(0,40):
                    for jj in xrange(0,20):
                        try:
                            nc = y[a+ii,b+jj]
                        except IndexError: nc = 0

                        if nc == "1" or nc == "5":
                            news = news +1
                            if news == 100:
                                break
                            else:
                                pass
                            y[a+ii,b+jj] = 4
                        else:
                            pass


The version of python I'm using is 2.4.3 and the version of NumPy is
0.9.8

thanks again for all the help
Sonja