Generally, unless it's supposed to run as a server (incoming requests can happen at any time) or start-up time is prohibitive, I prefer the cron-job solution myself anyway.

For example, with the CB stats, I have one app that's constantly running to watch IRC for CB messages. But that's because connecting to IRC and getting into the #cbstream channel can take a while, and I'll lose information if I'm not already in when the message occurs. However, everything else runs as cron jobs: pre-parsing data in the database (every 6 minutes) and creating the stats page (every 60 minutes).

The weak point really is that IRC application. I'm going to have to rewrite it at some point to us cb60 and/or the PM CB interface and gather its data via cron job, too, just for stability.

I've found some evidence of people complaining they run scripts and when the scripts exit,they do not release the memory they acquired back to the operating system

I didn't think that was possible, except maybe in DOS...

In reply to Re: Gargantuan memory consumption issues by Tanktalus
in thread Gargantuan memory consumption issues by spx2

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