"The problem seems to be with the call to HTML::Format. After the end of the loop there still seem to be variables containing text, etc. rather than it all getting properly scoped out (and hence the memory being returned)."

You're using package variables (INPUT and @INPUT). Their scope is the entire package (i.e. main) and they will persist until the script ends. See "perlmod - Perl modules (packages and symbol tables)".

What you probably want is lexical variables (see my). Try writing your code along these lines: 

my $file = 'D:/htmladdresses.txt';
open my $input_fh, '<', $file
    or die "Can't open '$file' for reading: $!";
while (my $input = <$input_fh>) {
    chomp $input;
    # Use $input here as you were previously using it
}
close $input_fh;

[download]

See also: perlsub, perldata, our, local and open.

"I had a look at the nodes discussing memory leaks in general, but frankly did not find them that useful since they all mention tools such as Devel::Peek, Devel::Cycle... - but I cannot find a description of these tools that I as a newbie can understand."

You may find Test::LeakTrace is a little easier to use.

-- Ken

In reply to Re: Memory Leak HTML::FormatText by kcott
in thread Memory Leak HTML::FormatText by Anonymous Monk

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