APM: Debugging memory leak

[Mark Lehmann]

Remember that Perl (like other VM based languages) don't give memory back
once they've requested it from the operating system.  So a one time load of
data from disk to memory and back to disk again might request memory from the
OS and keep it if the disk to disk copy needed more memory temporarily.

In those cases you need to use things like sysread and read which take byte
sizes and only process a small chunk at a time.  It can be inconvenient to
code that way if you want to parse data.

>>>>> "WW" == Wayne Walker <wwalker at broadq.com> writes:

WW> I don't know of any memory monitoring stuff in perl, but it may be
WW> there.

WW> I would start by generating log output that prints a line every time you
WW> use significant memory.

WW> While looking at the code to see where you use significant memory you
WW> may find the culprit.

WW> Otherwise you may see in the log that something you thought wasn't
WW> called often is.

WW> On Tue, Jul 08, 2003 at 11:48:25PM -0500, Evan Harris wrote:
>> 
>> Is there a way to track where memory is being used in a large
>> long-running perl program?
>> 
>> I have a program that after about 6 hours has leaked about 200meg of memory,
>> and I can't figure out why.  It started doing this after an upgrade from
>> perl 5.6.1 to 5.8.
>> 
>> I'd like to be able to get some sort of stats on which modules what amount
>> of the memory is being used in, so I can figure out where to start trying to
>> fix it.
>> 
>> Any suggestions would be appreciated.
>> 
>> Evan
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> Austin mailing list
>> Austin at mail.pm.org
>> http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/austin

WW> -- 

WW> Wayne Walker

WW> www.broadq.com :)  Bringing digital video and audio to the living room
WW> _______________________________________________
WW> Austin mailing list
WW> Austin at mail.pm.org
WW> http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/austin

-- 
Mark Lehmann
email mlehmann at marklehmann.com | phone 512 689-7705