Your OS may be using the missing memory as file cache.

Once the process exits, the OS frees all the memory allocated by it. AFAIK, the only way to have some allocated memory survive the program is to use shared named memory

Perl will not do that by itself. You will have to request this kind of memory explicitly from your program or use some module that does it.

In reply to Re: memory not freed after perl exits. Solaris. by salva
in thread memory not freed after perl exits. Solaris. by Workplane

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