Thanks Mike for you answer. I will use the occasion to add some comments on the links and on my approach.
I am programming in Python 2.5, mainly to avoid the bug that memory arenas were never freed before. The program is working on both Mac OS X (intel) and Linux, so I prefer portable approaches. On Apr 11, 3:34 pm, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [...] > I found a post on a similar topic that looks like it may give you some > ideas: > > http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2004-October/285400.html I see the comment about using mmap as valuable. I tried to use that using numpy.memmap but I wasn't successful. I don't remember why at the moment. The other tricks are problem-dependent, and my case is not like them (I believe). > http://www.artima.com/forums/flat.jsp?forum=106&thread=174099 Good ideas. I hope that python will grow a replacable gc one day. I think that pypy already has a choice at the moment. > http://www.nabble.com/memory-manage-in-python-fu-t3386442.html > http://www.thescripts.com/forum/thread620226.html Bingo! This thread actually reaches more or less the same conclusion. In fact, Alex Martelli describes the exact pattern in http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2007-March/431910.html I probably got the idea from a previous thread by him or somebody else. It should be much earlier than March, though, as my program was working since last year. So, let's say the function I have written is an implementation of Alex's architectural pattern. Probably makes it easier to get in the cookbook:) Regards, Muhammad -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list