tiny script has memory leak

[Ian Kelly]

On Fri, May 11, 2012 at 3:29 PM, gry <georgeryoung at gmail.com> wrote:
> sys.version --> '2.6 (r26:66714, Feb 21 2009, 02:16:04) \n[GCC 4.3.2
> [gcc-4_3-branch revision 141291]]
> I thought this script would be very lean and fast, but with a large
> value for n (like 150000), it uses 26G of virtural memory, and things
> start to crumble.
>
> #!/usr/bin/env python
> '''write a file of random integers.  args are: file-name how-many'''
> import sys, random
>
> f = open(sys.argv[1], 'w')
> n = int(sys.argv[2])
> for i in xrange(n):
>    print >>f, random.randint(0, sys.maxint)
> f.close()
>
> What's using so much memory?

I don't know, I'm not able to replicate the problem you're reporting.
When I try your script with a value of 150000, it runs in under a
second and does not appear to consume any more virtual memory than
what is normally used by the Python interpreter.  I suspect there is
something else at play here.

> What would be a better way to do this?  (aside from checking arg
> values and types, I know...)

I don't see anything wrong with the way you're currently doing it,
assuming you can solve your memory leak issue.

Ian