...so while it is sleeping it does not use any memory right?

No, not right: it still reserves whatever memory it had allocated when the sleep starts at line 7 (which includes a small amount of memory required for the countdown tracking) -- and it still uses a few CPU cycles to do the tracking.

what if it does take all that time everytime it starts again does it keep building upon the memory it had and then get larger and larger?

There's no obvious (to me) reason for the memory useage to grow when the sleep time expires. However, you're disconnecting from the database before the sleep, so you'll need someone with a better handle on garbage collection and memory release to get a knowledgeable reply. Note, though, that "starts again" is perhaps better phrased "resumes." sleep does not force reinitialization of anything, except as forced to do so by your code.

...reduce the memory on the fly, even before perl is exited?

Likewise, heed what wiser heads say about this, but my understanding is that that's not likely.

In reply to Re^3: automating a task by ww
in thread automating a task by Anonymous Monk

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.