How to capture out of memory excpetion in perl?

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

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Re: How to capture out of memory excpetion in perl? by Discipulus (Canon) on Apr 23, 2008 at 09:47 UTC
I cannot find an old discussion about the misterious $^M special variable but I found this: $^M By default, running out of memory is an untrappable, fatal error. However, if suitably built, Perl can use the contents of $^M as an eme +rgency memory pool after die()ing. Suppose that your Perl were compiled with -DPERL_EMERGENCY_SBRK and u +sed Perl's malloc. Then $^M = 'a' x (1 << 16); would allocate a 64K buffer for use in an emergency. See the INSTALL file in the Perl distribution for information on how t +o add custom C compilation flags when compiling perl. To discourage casual use of this advanced feature, there is no English + long name for this variable. [download] ah ok is this: 287850 Hope some sage can tell how to use this!! HTH Lor*	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: How to capture out of memory excpetion in perl? by educated_foo (Vicar) on Apr 24, 2008 at 02:19 UTC
In my experience with similar things, the idea is that your code gets called (via signal or callback) when the program dips into the emergency pool ($^M). It should then immediately rummage around and try to free stuff, then try to reallocate the emergency pool. If it fails, then you're probably doomed. Unfortunately, I don't see a relevant callback for $^M. If so, then there's no way to tell when $^M has been used, and I don't see how it can be useful.	[reply]
Re^3: How to capture out of memory excpetion in perl? by BrowserUk (Patriarch) on Apr 24, 2008 at 02:36 UTC
If so, then there's no way to tell when $^M has been used, and I don't see how it can be useful. I reached a similar conclusion a while ago: Is $^M a leftover April Fool? :( Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error. "Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority". In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice. "Too many [] have been sedated by an oppressive environment of political correctness and risk aversion."	[reply]
Re: How to capture out of memory excpetion in perl? by haoess (Curate) on Apr 23, 2008 at 09:26 UTC
perldiag says: `Out of memory! (X) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficien +t remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. Perl h +as no option but to exit immediately. At least in Unix you may be able to get past this by increasing your p +rocess datasize limits: in csh/tcsh use limit and limit datasize n (w +here n is the number of kilobytes) to check the current limits and ch +ange them, and in ksh/bash/zsh use ulimit -a and ulimit -d n , respec +tively.` [download] But maybe you can fork the process out and capture the output/exit code. -- Frank	[reply] [d/l]
Re: How to capture out of memory excpetion in perl? by oxone (Friar) on Apr 23, 2008 at 10:20 UTC
I asked something similar recently and the responses were very useful.	[reply]
Re: How to capture out of memory excpetion in perl? by mscharrer (Hermit) on Apr 23, 2008 at 09:20 UTC
I don't know any way in Perl to do this directly and I wouldn't be surprised if there isn't one. One idea would be to write a Perl script which is calling a other Perl script using `system( )` inside `eval` and test if it's returns an error. However this wouldn't be very clean and portable. Untested.	[reply] [d/l] [select]