How are you running this script? I would expect the process to end when the script ends, but some engines keep the process in memory and just restart the script. Your comments about cmd.exe are interesting, and implies some kind of zombie process, but they should not take much memory, even on Windows (a couple of 4kb pages, last time I looked).

In reply to Re^3: break out of enless loop does not release memory by cdarke
in thread break out of enless loop does not release memory by PugSA

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