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Re: Memory Blowup Issues

• To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
• Subject: [mg126740] Re: Memory Blowup Issues
• From: "Kevin J. McCann" <kjm at KevinMcCann.com>
• Date: Sun, 3 Jun 2012 05:01:06 -0400 (EDT)
• Delivered-to: l-mathgroup@mail-archive0.wolfram.com
• References: <201206010918.FAA11834@smc.vnet.net> <jqcni0$17p$1@smc.vnet.net>

I already have 12Gb; so, that is not a solution. Others have suggested 
$HistoryLength = 0, which works. On the other hand, mvary = . did not 
change the amount of memory in use at all.

I guess acceptability of the memory/crash problem depends on your point 
of view. If indeed the ability to access previous outputs is important 
to the way you work (it is not to me), then I can see why it needs to be 
there even though it could lead to a crash in extreme cases like mine. 
However, the ability to limit this with $HistoryLength gives flexibility 
to the user.

I do not make use of the whole In[] Out[] thing, and, in fact, turn 
those labels off in all my notebooks.

Kevin

On 6/2/2012 5:48 AM, Ralph Dratman wrote:
> Solution: install more memory in your computer?
>
> That answer is sort of a wisecrack, but in real life, my Mac Mini now
> has 8 GB of RAM for the benefit of Mathematica -- yet the program
> still somehow manages to fill up memory and crash. That is why I keep
> glancing at the desktop memory monitor. If memory is almost full, I
> can usually stop Mathematica before things get really serious.
>
> That said, my experience has been that disposing of variables (using
> myvar=.) does help quite a bit. But I am not reading files very often.
> In your case, maybe something about reading a file is making it harder
> to free the memory used.
>
> By the way, in case you might be thinking that this whole crash
> problem is pretty unacceptable behavior for an app that sells for a
> lot of money in 2012.... yeah, you're right, it is.
>
> Ralph
>
>
>
> On Fri, Jun 1, 2012 at 5:18 AM, Kevin J. McCann<kjm at kevinmccann.com>  wrote:
>> I am dealing with some good sized data sets from satellite data. These
>> data are stored in hdf format. The problem is that I process a sequence
>> of these data sets by Importing and then processing; however, it seems
>> that the memory usage grows with each Import, even if I Remove the data.
>>
>> Here is a somewhat simplified example:
>>
>> MemoryInUse[] (* some data already read in *)
>> 2781549920
>>
>> Data=Import[fileName,"Data"]; (* import a new data set *)
>> MemoryInUse[]
>> 3302168936
>>
>> Data=Import[fileName,"Data"];(* import  it again *)
>> MemoryInUse[]
>> 3822781920
>>
>> Remove[Data] (* this has no effect on the memory usage *)
>> MemoryInUse[]
>> 3822787840
>>
>> As you can see, I will shortly run out of memory. Any ideas?
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Kevin
>>
>

• References:
  • Memory Blowup Issues
    • From: "Kevin J. McCann" <kjm@KevinMcCann.com>