I am also running out of memory before the loop completes.

What is your idea of $aref in that loop that bombs off? Is it an integer, or an array reference? What it the result of adding 1 to an array reference? or 2 ? What happens to an array (or array reference) if you index it with the result of that addition? 

my $aref = [];
print $aref,"\n";
print $aref + 1,"\n";
print $aref + 2,"\n";
print "mem: ",qx{ps -o vsz= $$};
$aref[$aref +2] = "foo";
print "mem: ",qx{ps -o vsz= $$};
__END__
ARRAY(0xf5dba0)
16112545
16112546
mem:  28964
mem: 154844

[download]

By converting the hexadecimal address of $aref to integer - this is what happens if you add an integer to it - and using it then as an index, you extend @data and pre-allocate slots, each containing a NULL value. If the address of $aref is high enough, your program hits the memory limit of your machine.

perl -le'print map{pack c,($-++?1:13)+ord}split//,ESEL'

In reply to Re: Running out of memory while running this for loop by shmem
in thread Running out of memory while running this for loop by Ppeoc

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