in reply to Clearing an Array of Array's from memory

Most of the time when I see someone clearing memory that way, they're not taking advantage of use strict and lexical scoping.

Instead of manually "freeing" the array, declare it my within the block of code you need it in. Perl will automatically get rid of it when you don't need it anymore. See also, Lexical scoping like a fox.

----
I wanted to explore how Perl's closures can be manipulated, and ended up creating an object system by accident.
-- Schemer

Note: All code is untested, unless otherwise stated

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Re: Re: Clearing an Array of Array's from memory
by Elian (Parson) on Aug 29, 2003 at 17:26 UTC
    Letting a variable fall out of scope doesn't free up all its memory. The memory used for the members of an aggregate (array or hash) are generally freed, however the memory used for the structure of the variable (including scalars) aren't freed--they are instead saved in case the scope is re-entered. Notice: 
    use Devel::Size qw(size);
$foo = 2;
while ($foo--) {
  {
    my $bar;
    print Devel::Size::size(\$bar), " ", length($bar), "\n";
    $bar = " " x 10000000;
  }
}

    [download]
    prints 
    12 0
10000025 0

    [download]
    not 
    12 0
12 0

    [download]
    which is what you'd expect if the memory was actually freed on scope exit.
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