resolution of XML::DOM::Parser memory leak

wolis has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hi Monks,

Can anyone shed any light on the status of the memory leak in XML::DOM::Parser?

As mentioned here 251630

I installed XML-Parser-2.34 - however I'm using Perl 5.6.1

Does this mean (since the node states the leak is fixed) that the problem is with Perl 5.6.1 more than XML::DOM::Parser? - I'd rather not have to update Perl to 5.8.0 since its all working nicely (apart from this leak) now.

Thanks,

 ___
/\__\ "What is the world coming to?"
\/__/ www.wolispace.com/cow
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Re: resolution of XML::DOM::Parser memory leak by gellyfish (Monsignor) on Aug 20, 2004 at 09:07 UTC
There is potentially a separate issue with apparent memory leaks in XML::DOM::Parser and those that may or may not have been fixed in XML::Parser. You may experience memory leaks in XML::DOM if you are creating many lexical DOM objects and just letting them go out of scope without caling the `Dispose` method on them before you do so, this is because there may be (intentional) circular references in the DOM object in memory. I have the same problem with XML::XSLT which uses XML::DOM under the covers and creates a number of DOM objects to hold intermediate results and parts of the template and so forth and it appears to leak like a sieve when processing a large number of documents with the same object. /J\	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: resolution of XML::DOM::Parser memory leak by wolis (Scribe) on Aug 23, 2004 at 04:34 UTC
Ah.. thanks for that.. makes perfect sense. A quick check of the script and 'dispose' has not been used - adding it at the appropriate spot fixes everything! (woo hoo) Mind you the XML file is 2Mb yet 42Mb are used when its loaded - disposing of it, doesnt free up all that memory but loading other XMLs (or reloading the same one) does not continue expand this memory usage (phew) I can live with this. Thanks again. `___ /\__\ "What is the world coming to?" \/__/ www.wolispace.com` [download]	[reply] [d/l]