On this system (Linux 2.6.x, AMD64, 2 GB RAM, python2.4) I am able to construct a 1 GB string by repetition, as well as compress a 512MB string with gzip in one gulp.
$ cat claudio.py s = '1234567890'*(1048576*50) import zlib c = zlib.compress(s) print len(c) open("/tmp/claudio.gz", "wb").write(c) $ python claudio.py 1017769 $ python -c 'print len("m" * (1048576*1024))' 1073741824 I was also able to create a 1GB string on a different system (Linux 2.4.x, 32-bit Dual Intel Xeon, 8GB RAM, python 2.2). $ python -c 'print len("m" * 1024*1024*1024)' 1073741824 I agree with another poster that you may be hitting Windows limitations rather than Python ones, but I am certainly not familiar with the details of Windows memory allocation. Jeff
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