My test says it takes about 200Mb for a single-linked list.

If you don't need linked lists, using plain arrays is probably more memory efficient. 

#!perl/bin/perl 
use strict; 
$|=1;

my ($list1,$list2);
print "Making list1\n";
for (0 .. 1_000_000) {
    my $head = $list1;
    $list1 = ["a" x 40,\$head];
}
print "Making list2\n";
for (0 .. 60_000) {
    my $head = $list2;
    $list2 = ["b" x 338,\$head];
}
print "Press enter to exit: ";

my $dummy = <STDIN>;

[download]
update: perl should be fine with that kind of usage. just remember that perl is no where near as memory-efficient as C can be. perl values have a significant overhead. especially if you have many small objects.

update 2: i get a segfault from this script at destruction. that's not right. (tested perl 5.00504 & perl 5.8.8)

update 3: ok, increasing the stack size limit (ulimit -s 400000) fixes the problem.

"What should it profit a man, if he should win a flame war, yet lose his cool?"

In reply to Re: perl memory use question by Joost
in thread perl memory use question by exodist

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.