Suitability for long-running text processing?

[tsuraan]

After reading
http://www.python.org/doc/faq/general/#how-does-python-manage-memory, I
tried modifying this program as below:

a=[]
> for i in xrange(33,127):
>  for j in xrange(33,127):
>   for k in xrange(33,127):
>    for l in xrange(33, 127):
>     a.append(chr(i)+chr(j)+chr(k)+chr(l))


import sys
sys.exc_clear()
sys.exc_traceback = sys.last_traceback = None

del(a)
> import gc
> gc.collect()


And it still never frees up its memory.
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