Re: Perl releasing memory back to the system

zentara,
As far as I know, this is dependent on the OS and possibly on how Perl was compiled (with or without system malloc). If the OS doesn't support releasing the memory then Perl6 isn't going to make it possible. Perl6 may make systems that do support the release more likely though. Typically, the OS is going to want to get large contiguous chunks. Perl6 and Parrot are likely to be more like C in the way they use memory then existing Perl is.

I am not a subject matter expert and this has been discussed here several times before. Super Search should shed even more light on the matter.

Cheers - L~R

Comment on Re: Perl releasing memory back to the system

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Re^2: Perl releasing memory back to the system by zentara (Cardinal) on Apr 07, 2005 at 15:22 UTC
It looks complicated, but does indeed look hopeful. From the new Parrot 0.12 release: `Parrot 0.1.2 contains a lot of new stuff: .... Parts of a generational garbage collector ....` [download] Whatever that is, it sounds good, :-) I'm not really a human, but I play one on earth. flash japh	[reply] [d/l]
Re^3: Perl releasing memory back to the system by BrowserUk (Patriarch) on Apr 07, 2005 at 16:05 UTC
The generational GC means that a garbage collection run doesn't need to inspect everything every time it runs. That is, it is possible to ask it to only inspect some subset of the total allocations during a given run. Useful when you know that you have just released a bunch of stuff local to some level of stack framing, and you can free that with incurring the cost of having everything prior to the current level also inspected. It has nothing to do with releasing memory back to the OS. In general, Perl takes the view that if you asked for a lump of memory once, then freed it, then you are quite likely to ask for it again, so why bother giving it back to the OS. If you don't make further use of it, and other tasks require more memory than is physically available, then the unused portions of your task space in Perl will likely get swapped to disk. If you never make further use of them, then very little overhead is incurred by it's presence. What is your concern with releasing memory back to the OS? Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error. Lingua non convalesco, consenesco et abolesco. Rule 1 has a caveat! -- Who broke the cabal?	[reply]