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How can I explicitly free memory in Python?

Asked 2009-08-22T19:10:35.333
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I wrote a Python program that acts on a large input file to create a few million objects representing triangles. The algorithm is:

  1. read an input file
  2. process the file and create a list of triangles, represented by their vertices
  3. output the vertices in the OFF format: a list of vertices followed by a list of triangles. The triangles are represented by indices into the list of vertices

The requirement of OFF that I print out the complete list of vertices before I print out the triangles means that I have to hold the list of triangles in memory before I write the output to file. In the meanwhile I'm getting memory errors because of the sizes of the lists.

What is the best way to tell Python that I no longer need some of the data, and it can be freed?

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The del statement might be of use, but IIRC it isn't guaranteed to free the memory. The docs are here ... and a why it isn't released is here.

I have heard people on Linux and Unix-type systems forking a python process to do some work, getting results and then killing it.

This article has notes on the Python garbage collector, but I think lack of memory control is the downside to managed memory

answered 2009-08-22T19:16:12.860

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