Python: raise an exception when out of main memory

Question

I am handling large arrays with Python and the library numpy. Sometimes I create unexpectedly huge arrays, which fills totally the main memory (RAM) of the computer, and starts writing on the slow second memory (swap, hard disk). When this happens, I cannot do anything but wait for the end of the writing (which can take dozens of minutes) or perform a force shutdown. To avoid this situation, I would prefer to raise an exception when the array I am trying to allocate is too large for the RAM. How to do this?

OS: Windows 7 64 bits

Edit: I don't agree with the duplicate tag: I'm not asking about how to get the available memory, I'm asking about built-ins mechanisms that prevent me to allocate objects in memory without paging.

https://docs.python.org/2/library/resource.html?highlight=setrlimit — Padraic Cunningham, Feb 22 '16 at 19:09

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 22 '16 at 19:03

1

You could use psutil and periodically check psutil.virtual_memory() or similar.

answered Feb 22 '16 at 19:03

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Python: raise an exception when out of main memory

1 Answers1