Re: Mathematica 2.0 swapfile problem?
- To: mathgroup at christensen.cybernetics.net
- Subject: [mg1776] Re: Mathematica 2.0 swapfile problem?
- From: Rex Dieter <rdieter at mathlab01.unl.edu>
- Date: Sun, 30 Jul 1995 21:32:42 -0400
- Organization: University of Nebraska--Lincoln
mek at guinan.arl.psu.edu (Mark E. Kotanchek) wrote: > In article <3uote1$ica at er6.rutgers.edu> jin at er6.rutgers.edu (gum) writes: > > I got the educational copy several years ago, and only started > serious use recently. My swapfile just keeps growing and never shrinks. > Should I upgrade to recent version to get rid of the problem? Or > is there any trick I can do to keep the condition under control? > I'm running mathematica on NS 3.0. Thanks > > Mathematica has the neat feature that it preserves _every_ result ever > generated -- which is why after days of running you can still access that > umpteen megabyte variable as "%12" even though you stopped caring about > "%12" quite some time ago. IMHO, this is an example of poor design for > those of us who program or do data analysis with Mma. Since the Mma folk > don't believe this is a design flaw, I believe this is a valid concern, but your misinformation about this feature must be corrected... From page 514 of the book: Mathematica, A System for doing Mathematics by Computer... In a standard session, Mathematica stores all your input and output lines for the duration of the session. In a very long session, this may take up a large amount of computer memory. You can nevertheless get rid of the input and output lines by explicitly clearing the values of 'In' and 'Out', using: 'Unprotect[In, Out]' followed by Clear[In, Out]. An alternative startegy is to reset the line number counter $Line, so that new lines are numbered so as to overwrite previous ones... --- Rex A. Dieter rdieter at math.unl.edu (NeXT/MIME) Research Associate Voice: (402)472-9747 Department of Mathematics and Statistics FAX: (402)472-8466 University of Nebraska - Lincoln http://www.math.unl.edu/~rdieter/