[Liblas-devel] Python memory usage issue

[Howard Butler]

On Jan 21, 2011, at 4:07 AM, Nicola Creati wrote:

> Hello,
> running this simple Python script you will find that you will soon get  out of memory. (It works with any las files)
> Can someone explain why?
> Thanks,
> 
> Nicola
> 
> 
> from liblas.file import File
> f = File('/Downloads/libLAS-1.6.0b3/test/data/1.1_1.las')
> for i in xrange(15000):
>    temp = f.header.offset

Cache the header:

f = File('/Downloads/libLAS-1.6.0b3/test/data/1.1_1.las')
h = f.header
for i in xrange(15000):
    temp = h.offset

As far as the reason why it runs out of memory?  Bad design :)  Putting the f.header call inside the inner loop means constructing a python header object every time.  This was leaking header objects, and has been fixed in the main branch.

Thanks for the report,

Howard