From: "nicholasmabry@..." <nicholasmabry@...>
Date: 2008-06-19T11:18:48+09:00
Subject: Re: Can I find out the memory used by an object?

On Jun 18, 4:23 pm, Marc Heiler <sheve...@linuxmail.org> wrote:
> What about really simple objects?

I agree with the previous responses. The overriding concern with this
last question seems to be an examination of why you intend cache the
objects. In the case of simple objects, rebuilding objects after the
garbage collector frees them is likely not going to cause a
bottleneck.

For large, complex objects/structures as described in the original
post, defining their logical memory size is a problem encountered in
all languages where references/pointers are available. It seems the
only generally useful solution to unbounded memory growth is to
attempt to instantiate an object, and if the platform or OS won't
allocate enough memory for it, attempt to free some space and try
again. For an interesting discussion of how Ruby's garbage collector
can assist with this problem, check out this link:

http://whytheluckystiff.net/articles/theFullyUpturnedBin.html

-Nick