[ruby-talk:16360] Garbage Collection?

I have narrowed the issue down a little further.  It appears to be related 
to Marshal.dump() and/or the << method, the += method does not eat memory. 
 I wonder if it could be an issue with realloc not interacting properly 
with garbage collection.  Any suggestions?

def test_dump(count)
   a = []
   0.upto(99999) {|i| a[i] = rand(999999)}
   0.upto(count) do |i|
      0.upto(99) do |i|
         b = Marshal.dump(a)
      end
      b = nil
      GC.start
      print "GC.start\n"
   end
   0.upto(a.nitems-1){|i| a[i] = nil}
   a = nil
end

def test_str_cat(count)
   a = ''
   0.upto(count) do |i|
      0.upto(99999) do |i|
         a << 'aaaa'
      end
      a = nil
      a = ''
      GC.start
      #print "GC.start\n"
   end
   0.upto(a.nitems-1){|i| a[i] = nil}
   a = nil
end

#test_dump(200000)
test_str_cat(200000)