thanks for the reply.
i am using strict and warnings.
i really try to avoid globals; this example is the only place i could see really eating up memory. how about this:
assuming the same code, say you took each object and passed it around:

while($i < 20000000) {
    @objects = getObjects(); 

    foreach my $obj (@objects)
    {
        SomeMethod($obj);
    }
    $i += 100;
}

sub SomeMethod
{
    my $obj = shift;
    
    AnotherMethod($obj);
}

sub AnotherMethod
{
    my $obj = shift;
}
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Isn't the $obj param essentialy a hash ref? This doesn't increment the reference count in every sub does it? It should all be one reference to the same memory location, right?

Or - what if the object had a "member" that was a ref to an array of other objects, could that cause problems?:

--------------------------------

package Obj;

sub new 
{
    my $class = shift; 
    my $name = shift;
    my $arrayRef = shift;
    
    my $self = {
        NAME => $obj, 
        ARRAY_REF => $arrayRef 
    };

    bless $self, $class;
    
    return $self;
}

return 1;

# ex: my $obj = new Obj("x", \@arrayOfObjects);
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