I have heard that is possible for a perl script to *unintentionally* kill an OS, by using all the system's available memory or maxing out available processes. I believe failing to close file handles is one such example of how this can happen.
So my question is, how can you tell if your program is a memory hog, or is forking processes unbeknownst? Will 'ps -aux|grep me' show these processes. Will using the '-w' directive prevent it? I'm confident nothing I've written is a problem, some of the modules, not so much. Also, does it matter if the script runs as a cronjob?
I'm making the switch to mod_perl at some point so I rather find out sooner, rather than later these potential problems. I'm on Debian. Any insight into any of this would be greatly appreciated - J

In reply to How to tell if script sucks...memory by jriggs420

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