[Baypiggies] Discussion for newbies/beginner night talks - test results

[Dennis Reinhardt]

At 04:29 PM 2/15/2007, Chad Netzer wrote:
>Note that the "garbage collector module" in CPython refers to the
>cyclic-reference garbage collector, not the normal reference count
>garbage collecting system.  In general, objects are destroyed
>immediately after their reference count drops to zero, rather than
>when a separate garbage collector thread decides to mark them as
>garbage.

Distinction noted.  It was not entirely clear to me which case applied to 
my code:

         1) N objects all having reference counts of 0 or
         2) N objects with N-1 references counts of 1 in
            a chain with 1 object having 0 references.

IOW, I was not clear which model applied to my situation.  I was abetted in 
not having a clear picture of this because memory I expected to be returned 
to OS was not returned. I was holding open the possibility that the 
cyclic-reference collector might apply.

>I'm happy to hear that, as of 2.5, CPython can now return blocks of
>memory used to allocate small objects to the system on occasion.
>Hmmm, let's see...
>
>Cool!

Yes, Cool!  Great stuff.

  ---------------------------------
| Dennis    | DennisR at dair.com    |
| Reinhardt | http://www.dair.com |
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