From: ptkwt@...1.aracnet.com (Phil Tomson)
Date: 2001-12-19T23:46:19+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:28906] Re: memory management

In article <9vloo0$1tlb$1@ns.felk.cvut.cz>,
Petr Fischer <petr.fischer@praguesoft.cz> wrote:
>Hi,
>
>I am new in ruby language (I am new in languages based on garbage
>collection).
>
>I use huge memory arrays, such as:
>
>a = []
>a[10000000] = "bla" // this allocates 40MB of memory on Win2000
>// ...some work with array
>
>And now, array "a" is unnecessary for me.
>
>a = []
>
>But 40MB of memory is still allocated (in task manager on Win2000).
>
>How I free allocated memory?
This will force it to be garbage collected:
a = nil
GC.start

Generally, you don't need to worry about doing garbage collection 
manually, Ruby's GC is pretty efficient, but you don't always know when it 
will occur.  So in a case like this where you've allocated such a large 
amount of memory it does make sense to call the garbage collector as soon 
as you don't need the object anymore.

Phil