Wierd behavior of gc.collect

[Dave Angel]

On 03/19/2013 12:36 PM, Bodhi wrote:
> I know this, but my question is what does gc.collect do which results in the c library to free memory? Usually it is because of unreferenced objects in a cycle or something, but here that doesn't seem to be the case.
>

As I said, python calls the C free() function, whether it's when an 
object's ref-count goes to zero, or whether it's during a gc call, where 
circular refs are freed.

But free() does not necessarily release the memory to the OS.  And the 
times it does depends on which C library is being used, and what OS it's 
running on.

If the freed memory affects top in some situations, it's a C library 
detail.  I've written a replacement C allocator in the past for Windows 
that used a different scheme for blocks over a certain threshold, and 
when those blocks were freed, it gave them back to the OS.  But such 
blocks were multiples of 64k, which was the increment for VirtualAlloc.




-- 
DaveA