optimization - Python garbage collection

Question

I have created some python code which creates an object in a loop, and in every iteration overwrites this object with a new one of the same type. This is done 10.000 times, and Python takes up 7mb of memory every second until my 3gb RAM is used. Does anyone know of a way to remove the objects from memory?

Answer 1

I think this is circular reference (though the question isn't explicit about this information.)

One way to solve this problem is to manually invoke garbage collection. When you manually run garbage collector, it will sweep circular referenced objects too.

import gc

for i in xrange(10000):
    j = myObj()
    processObj(j)
    #assuming count reference is not zero but still
    #object won't remain usable after the iteration

    if !(i%100):
        gc.collect()

Here don't run garbage collector too often because it has its own overhead, e.g. if you run garbage collector in every loop, interpretation will become extremely slow.