Hi All, I am a new user of Python and am having a bit of problem understanding the Reference counting and memory leakage issues.
Requesting help from experienced users.... I wrote the following simple program. #!/usr/bin/python import sys global a print "Total Reference count at the start =",sys.gettotalrefcount() a=1 print "a ref count =",sys.getrefcount(a) b=a print "a ref count =",sys.getrefcount(a) del a del b print "Total Reference count at the end =",sys.gettotalrefcount() I executed it. I am seeing the following. Total Reference count at the start = 16538 a ref count = 49 a ref count = 50 Total Reference count at the end = 16540 [6416 refs] There are a few questions that I am having on this. (1) Why should 'a' reference count be 49 before I even made an assignment ? (2) The Total Reference count at the end has increased by 2 . Why ? Am I leaking memory ? (3) I have read somewhere that an increase in sys.gettotalrefcount() is indicative of a memory leak ? Aint that correct ? Thanks for the help. Bye, raghavan V -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list