[Bro] Returning local variables and garbage collection

[Robin Sommer]

On Fri, Jul 24, 2009 at 16:53 -0700, you wrote:

>    Or, is the object the same and just internal refcnt are increased or
>    decreased? If so, it shouldn't really make any difference as refcnt
>    should be going to 0 after X finishes.

This is indeed what happens. Non-atomic objects are passed around as
references, with reference counts adjusted as necessary.

>    However, I'm experiencing and (almost linear) increasing memory
>    consumption, and that's weird (bug?). Any idea?

Not sure right now, the code excerpts you showed look ok. One thing
to do is running with profiling.bro, that will let Bro generate a
file prof.log with various memory statistics. Feel free to send me
the output if it's too cryptic. 

If that doesn't help, some leak checking/profiling could help
illuminating what's going on, see

http://blog.icir.org/2008/02/making-sure-your-bro-code-does-not-leak.html

Robin

P.S.: Are you creating any cyclic reference structures?



-- 
Robin Sommer * Phone +1 (510) 666-2886 * robin at icir.org 
ICSI/LBNL    * Fax   +1 (510) 666-2956 *   www.icir.org