why it gets larger from having half of its elements removed.

Because using $#array causes some magic to be attached to the array.

You don't even have to assign to $#array for this to happen, only reference it:


@b = 1 .. 10; print size \@b;;
256

print $#b; print size \@b;;
9
440

[download]

And yes, 184 bytes does seem excessive. You'd think that the magic could be stored once and simply referenced for each array using an 4/8-byte pointer.

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In reply to Re^3: Shrunk array takes more memory than original by BrowserUk
in thread Shrunk array takes more memory than original by kroach

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