[SciPy-dev] [SciPy-user] Memory usage of scipy.io.loadmat

[Xavier Saint-Mleux]

>
> So - just invoking an error in the ipython command line has freed up
> 300 MB. Where did they come from? I tried different things - assigning
> other variables doesn't seem to free up this memory. Neither do calls
> to other functions. Except "plot()", which does seem to do the trick
> for some reason. Interestingly, when I run all this in a python
> interactive session (and not ipython), I get a similar memory usage
> initially. Calling a non-existent variable does not free up the
> memory, but other things do. For example, import matplotlib.pylab into
> the namespace did the trick. Does anyone have any idea what is going on?
>

It is probably just the garbage collector being invoked.  If you invoke
it manually, does it always free memory? e.g.:

import gc

gc.collect()



Xavier Saint-Mleux