Re: avoiding child death by size limit

On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 5:56 PM, André Warnier <[email protected]> wrote:
> When you say "It (perl) will keep the memory", do you mean that
> - the perl interpreter embedded in this Apache child will keep the memory
> (and not return it to the OS), but will re-use it if possible for other
> variable allocations happening within its lifetime ?
> or
> - the perl interpreter embedded in this Apache child will keep the memory
> (and not return it to the OS), and never re-use it again for any other
> variable allocation happening within its lifetime
> (in other words, this is a leak) ?

Option 3:
Perl will keep the memory and reuse it for that exact same lexical
variable the next time you enter that section of code.  It's a
performance optimization that is usually a good thing, unless you put
a lot of data in one lexical in some code that you rarely run.

It's not a leak.  Perl tracks the memory and will reuse it, just not
for any other variables.

> Does any guru care to provide some simple real-world examples of when memory
> once allocated to a variable is/is not being re-used, in a mod_perl handler
> context ?

It's simple to see.  Slurp a file into a lexical.  Let it go out of
scope.  There are many posts on this subject in the archives here as
well as on PerlMonks and the p5p archives.

> Maybe on this last subject, what I gather from this and other discussions
> I've seen, is that once the Perl interpreter obtained some memory from the
> OS, it rarely returns it (before it exits); and if it does, it is in any
> case not practically predictable in a cross-platform way, so one cannot rely
> on it.  Is that a fair interpretation ?

Yes, you can't expect to get memory back.

- Perrin