Re: demonstrate that perl can give back memory to the OS

Simple example:

sub ps {
 system("/bin/ps", "-o", "pid,size,vsize", $$);
}

ps();

{
  my $x = " " x 2_000_000;
  ps();
  undef $x;
}

ps();
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This is perl, v5.10.0 built for i686-linux-thread-multi

"What should it profit a man, if he should win a flame war, yet lose his cool?"

Comment on Re: demonstrate that perl can give back memory to the OS Download Code

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Re^2: demonstrate that perl can give back memory to the OS by ikegami (Patriarch) on Feb 27, 2009 at 17:30 UTC
An explanation: Lexical (`my`) variables and their string (or array) buffers aren't deallocated on scope exit whenever possible, only cleared. `undef $var;` (but not `$var = undef;`) deallocates the variable's string buffer.	[reply] [d/l] [select]