If I remember this correctly, and assuming it's the system reports of free memory you're watching, you can't release memory that's been allocated to an application back to the system until the process itself terminates.

The memory you're saving will be freed up, but it will only be available to the Perl process that's running the script until it either performs an exec and terminates, or exits normally.

This isn't actually a memory leak in Perl - it's just how the system itself handles memory management.

Hope that helps ..
-- Foxcub
A friend is someone who can see straight through you, yet still enjoy the view. (Anon)

UPDATE: Clarifications.


In reply to Re: Memory leak when using hash 'references' by Tanalis
in thread Memory leak when using hash 'references' by sureshr

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":



  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.