in reply to Memory Leak when slurping files in a loop
window |------[++++++|++++++]------|------|---| file A B C D E F blocks <-----> match
If you don't destroy/recreate the variables but just change the content, your memory consumption will¹ be minimal.
seek and read help reading chunks of data from files.
substr manipulates the content of strings.
pos returns the position of your last regex match.
So only one global variable $window of fixed size holding two current blocks could do and whenever the pos of a match leaves the first block you have to shift a new block into $window.
Cheers Rolf
¹) well, as long as Perl doesn't do very (unlikely) weird speed optimizations.
UPDATE:
This code is an almost perfect example of what I meant: Matching in huge files
The differences are the temporary variable $block which could be optimized away and the handling of pos. Instead of adjusting the window at "halftime", pos is adjusted to the window. Actually I think this is even smarter than what I planed...