Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ncar!tank!gargoyle!chinet!les
From: les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: perl memory usage?
Message-ID: <1990Mar19.210743.15896@chinet.chi.il.us>
Date: 19 Mar 90 21:07:43 GMT
Reply-To: les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell)
Organization: Chinet - Chicago Public Access UNIX
Lines: 13

Does perl release memory previously used by an associative array
when you do %array = (); ?  I have a script that gathers data
into a global array, then calls a subroutine that loads a similar
local array with existing data from a file, then sorts the keys and
merges the items back to the file.  At the end of the subroutine
both arrays are set to ().  After many passes through this, the program
slows to a crawl - should I be using undef %array or something else
to release the data storage and hash table?  The keys for the array
happen to be unique and thus not re-used by subsequent passes in case
that matters.

Les Mikesell
  les@chinet.chi.il.us