does memory usage always increase

[lethal0r]

function a iterates through itself, and can call function b.

memory usage slowly creeps up.

is it possible to have flat memory usage? it is my understanding that when a function ends, all the memory is freed up, but that does not seem to be the case here. there are no globals, no appending items to an array, b doesn't call a.

[incrediBILL]

We're talking function and not class?

Did you invoke any classes within the function?

FWIW, not all memory releases really release memory in ways that are immediately visible via stats of all memory used, etc. depending on the OS, Windows, Mac, Linux?

[lethal0r]

they are functions, and have not invoked any classes.

its running on linux.

im very new to the idea of keeping an eye on memory when coding, and I find it fascinating. ive set a lot of variables to NULL and have seen a big drop in the rate at which memory goes up.

memory_get_usage says it now increases at 100~ kilobytes with each iteration.

should I keep looking or is that a typical increase?

[rocknbil]

100K per pass seems like a lot! :-) To put it in context, create 100 K image and look at it's size - depending on the compression method, this could easily be larger than any reasonable web browser viewport. Speaking of web pages, the "recommended" web page size is not to exceed 40K (but today, you're lucky to find one under 100K.)

Is there any way to flush any variables within this function? What is it doing that's using up 100K with each pass? Is it using global variables, or are all variables scoped to the function?