python memory issues using 'for loop' and figures

Question

My overall issue is clearing memory. The issue is now split into two sections. First is unreleased memory used by a 'for' loop. I used memory_profiler to line by line see the memory usage. the lines in question are:

For the overall loop

Line #    Mem usage    Increment   Line Contents
================================================  

1266    275.6 MiB    171.9 MiB           for i in range(0, NumMeasurements):

For the inner port-switching loop

1323    188.7 MiB     82.7 MiB           for g in range(int(self.start_port1),int(self.stop_port1)+1):

Is there a way to 'release' this memory after the respective loop is complete? Is there a better way to implement this loop? Am I understanding this correctly? I run this code and after 4 hours my RAM is up by 5 GBs!

Second part is releasing referenced memory. exhibit A, is this line

1481    186.3 MiB     79.9 MiB               self.figure = Figure(figsize = (5,3.72))

I have tried plt.close(self.figure), gc.collect(), and del self.figure. None seem to release that memory. conversely, this line seemed to release memory.

1471    198.9 MiB    -70.0 MiB                   ref_phase = self.xpS21plot['port'+ str(1)]

--OP Update--

The part that is doing the plotting is this:

 ######All Phase Reference Statements
        self.figure = Figure(figsize = (5,3.72))
        self.figure.gca().grid(True)
        self.figure.gca().set_ylabel('Magnitude')
        self.figure.gca().set_xlabel('Freq (MHz)')
        self.figure.gca().set_title('Magnitude (current)')
        #self.figure.gca().set_ylim(-80,20)
        self.axes = self.figure.add_subplot(111)
        self.canvas = FCW(self.panel1, -1, self.figure)
        #Figure.set_xlabel(self.figure, 'oops')
        # Start plot Mag setup
        for k in range(int(self.start_port1),int(self.start_port1) + len(self.magS21)):
            self.axes.plot(self.yplot['port' + str(k)],self.xS21plot['port'+ str(k)])

Possible duplicate of [How can I explicitly free memory in Python?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1316767/how-can-i-explicitly-free-memory-in-python) — Marc B, Jul 14 '16 at 19:04
You need to post the code. It's keeping references to all the objects allocated in the loop, and only by seeing the code can we advise on how you can fix that. — Barmar, Jul 14 '16 at 19:05
@MarcB The accepted answer says to call `gc.collect()`, and he's already doing that. — Barmar, Jul 14 '16 at 19:06
I figured out that memory_profiler is listing all the memory that is used in the loop. so the just leave the second question. — C H, Jul 14 '16 at 22:42
try with xrange. It is a generator, so it doesn't gobble up memory producing a long list — joel goldstick, Jul 14 '16 at 22:46

python memory issues using 'for loop' and figures

0 Answers0