releasing memory to malloc

[John Machin]

iker.arizmendi at gmail.com wrote:
> Is there any way to get Python to release memory back to the
> C allocator? I'm currently running a script that goes through
> the following steps:
>
> 1) Creates a very large number of Python objects to produce
> a relatively small data structure that sits in a C extension.
> The Python objects consume quite a bit of memory.
>
> 2) Releases all the Python objects.
>
> 3) Invokes a function of said C extension for further
> processing. This step needs as much memory as possible.
>
> I'd like step 2 to return memory to the C allocator so that it
> is available to the extension in step 3 (which uses malloc).
>

Huh-uh. Other way up is better.

If you have access to the source of the extension, change it so that it
uses PyMem_Malloc, PyMem_Free, etc

Read this; it tells you why:

http://docs.python.org/api/memoryOverview.html

Cheers,
John