Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!convex!usenet
From: tchrist@convex.COM (Tom Christiansen)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: passing by reference
Message-ID: <1991Jun20.123343.11872@convex.com>
Date: 20 Jun 91 12:33:43 GMT
References: <81@sbi.sbi.com>
Sender: usenet@convex.com (news access account)
Reply-To: tchrist@convex.COM (Tom Christiansen)
Organization: CONVEX Software Development, Richardson, TX
Lines: 22
Nntp-Posting-Host: pixel.convex.com

From the keyboard of alan@sbi.sbi.com (Alan Zeigler):

>while ($i++ < 1000000) {
>    foreach ('foo', 'bar') {
>	*FILEHANDLE = &heap_new('filehandle_heap');

I'm not entirely surprised you're getting a leak here.  From the man page:

     Assignment to *name is currently recommended only inside a
     local().  You can actually assign to *name anywhere, but the
     previous referent of *name may be stranded forever.  This
     may or may not bother you.

I suspect that's what happening to you.

Of course, if you say local(*FILEHANDLE) in your loop, you'll still
get 1000000 versions pushed on the stack, which I'd call sub-optimal.

--tom
--
Tom Christiansen		tchrist@convex.com	convex!tchrist
		"So much mail, so little time."