comment on

Yes, some platforms use it as default:

$ grep  "mymalloc='y'" hints/*
hints/hpux.sh:    $undef|false|[nN]*) usemymalloc='y' ;;
hints/ncr_tower.sh:usemymalloc='y'
hints/next_3.sh:#usemymalloc='y'
hints/next_4.sh:usemymalloc='y'
hints/sco_2_3_4.sh:usemymalloc='y'
hints/super-ux.sh:    usemymalloc='y'
hints/unicosmk.sh:'') usemymalloc='y'
hints/unicos.sh:    # usemymalloc='y'
hints/utekv.sh:usemymalloc='y'
[download]

But not so many. It seems using only sbrk for memory allocation, so it will never reclaim allocated memory back to the OS. Many modern malloc implementations are using mmap for allocating large blocks. Here's the example script:

use strict;
use warnings;

system "ps vp $$";

local $/;
open my $fd, "<", $ARGV[0] or die $!;
my $content = <$fd>;
system "ps vp $$";

undef $content;
system "ps vp $$";
[download]

And here are results with different perl's on Ubuntu:

$ dd if=/dev/zero of=zero.dat bs=8192 count=131072
131072+0 records in
131072+0 records out
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 8.40646 s, 128 MB/s

$ ls -lh zero.dat 
-rw-r--r-- 1 zwon zwon 1.0G 2010-03-06 13:23 zero.dat

$ perl -V | grep mymalloc
    usemymalloc=n, bincompat5005=undef

$ perl slurp_file.pl zero.dat
  PID TTY      STAT   TIME  MAJFL   TRS   DRS   RSS %MEM COMMAND
 3775 pts/1    S+     0:00      0     3 18140  2244  0.0 perl slurp_fi
+le.pl zero.dat
  PID TTY      STAT   TIME  MAJFL   TRS   DRS   RSS %MEM COMMAND
 3775 pts/1    S+     0:01      0     3 1066720 1050840 25.9 perl slur
+p_file.pl zero.dat
  PID TTY      STAT   TIME  MAJFL   TRS   DRS   RSS %MEM COMMAND
 3775 pts/1    R+     0:01      0     3 18140  2264  0.0 perl slurp_fi
+le.pl zero.dat

$ /opt/perl/5.10.1/bin/perl -V | grep mymalloc
    config_args='-des -Dusemymalloc -Dusethreads -Dprefix=/opt/perl/5.
+10.1'
    usemymalloc=y, bincompat5005=undef

$ /opt/perl/5.10.1/bin/perl slurp_file.pl zero.dat
  PID TTY      STAT   TIME  MAJFL   TRS   DRS   RSS %MEM COMMAND
 3792 pts/1    S+     0:00      0  1354 18925  2212  0.0 /opt/perl/5.1
+0.1/bin/perl slurp_file.pl zero.dat
  PID TTY      STAT   TIME  MAJFL   TRS   DRS   RSS %MEM COMMAND
 3792 pts/1    S+     0:01      0  1354 1067505 1050812 25.9 /opt/perl
+/5.10.1/bin/perl slurp_file.pl zero.dat
  PID TTY      STAT   TIME  MAJFL   TRS   DRS   RSS %MEM COMMAND
 3792 pts/1    S+     0:01      0  1354 1067505 1050820 25.9 /opt/perl
+/5.10.1/bin/perl slurp_file.pl zero.dat
[download]

As you can see perl which uses system malloc was able to return memory. BTW, perl compiled with -Dusemymalloc failed its tests on t/op/threads.t, I checked this on Ubuntu amd64 and OpenBSD i386. Perhaps this is not a big problem, but it shows the level of support for this option.

PS note, that my opinion regarding perl's malloc is highly subjective and not based on a lot of facts. If you have any evidence that prove me wrong, I would be grateful to know about it.

In reply to Re^5: Monitoring the death of oversized Perl processes by zwon
in thread Monitoring the death of oversized Perl processes by arthurg

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