[Python-Dev] C API for gc.enable() and gc.disable() (original) (raw)

"Martin v. Löwis" martin at v.loewis.de
Sat Jun 21 21:56:44 CEST 2008

Antoine Pitrou wrote:

Le samedi 21 juin 2008 à 17:49 +0200, "Martin v. Löwis" a écrit :

I don't think any strategies based on timing will be successful. Instead, one should count and analyze objects (although I'm unsure how exactly that could work). Would it be helpful if the GC was informed of memory growth by the Python memory allocator (that is, each time it either asks or gives back a block of memory to the system allocator) ?

I don't see how. The garbage collector is already informed about memory growth; it learns exactly when a container object is allocated or deallocated. That the allocator then requests memory from the system only confirms what the garbage collector already knew: that there are lots of allocated objects. From that, one could infer that it might be time to perform garbage collection - or one could infer that all the objects are really useful, and no garbage can be collected.

Regards, Martin

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