How do I find the memory used by a python process

[Salim Fadhley]

I'm trying to create a python unit-test which will test a complex
program which includes a number of functions which have been
implemented in C or C++.

The unit-test needs to check that after the functions have been run a
few thousand times all of the memory used by those functions has been
un-allocated, i.e. that there are no memory leaks.

I was wondering if there is some way of finding out how much memory
the current thread is using. I would like some kind of simple function
call that gives me the current memory usage of the current process or
thread.

So each test would check the amount of memory available, call the
function N times and then check the amount of memory available
afterwards. If the amount of memory before and after changes by a
certain amount then the test is failed.

All of our unit-tests are single threaded processes. We run Windows
and Python 2.4.

Any suggestions? Thanks!

Sal

[=?ISO-8859-1?Q?=22Martin_v=2E_L=F6wis=22?=]

So each test would check the amount of memory available, call the

function N times and then check the amount of memory available
afterwards. If the amount of memory before and after changes by a
certain amount then the test is failed.

Please take a look at the muppy package:

http://pypi.python.org/pypi/muppy

Regards,
Martin

[Ben Finney]

Salim Fadhley <sa**********@g mail.comwrites:

The unit-test needs to check that after the functions have been run
a few thousand times all of the memory used by those functions has
been un-allocated, i.e. that there are no memory leaks.

This is a great test case, thanks. I must add it to my store of
generally-applicable unit test cases.

However, I wonder why you specify the need to run the function
*thousands* of times to test whether it releases memory. Surely your
code unit is deterministic and will release memory (or not) the same
way with the same inputs each time?

--
\ “The right to use [strong cryptography] is the right to speak |
`\ Navajo.� —Eben Moglen |
_o__) |
Ben Finney

[Scott David Daniels]

Ben Finney wrote:

Salim Fadhley <sa**********@g mail.comwrites:

>The unit-test needs to check that after the functions have been run
a few thousand times all of the memory used by those functions has
been un-allocated, i.e. that there are no memory leaks.

This is a great test case, .... However, I wonder why you specify
the need to run the function *thousands* of times to test whether
it releases memory. Surely your code unit is deterministic and will
release memory (or not) the same way with the same inputs each time?

Because simply using small integers will cause them to exist and live
on in a cache. For this (and similar caching reasons), what you want
to see is that memory doesn't grow in an unbounded way.
--Scott David Daniels
Sc***********@A cm.Org