On 10/8/07, Thomas Widlar <twidlar at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Is there any function in Maxima or Lisp to "take out all the trash"?
> 1. memory leaks: Max. gets slow and crashes after extensive graphics or
> extensive calculations. I hope that Lisp allows releasing dynamical
> allocated memory.
I don't know anything about WxMaxima, but here are some answers about
Maxima itself:
Of course Maxima includes completely automatic garbage collection.
After all, garbage collection was first introduced in Lisp!
This means that all *unreachable* structures are reclaimed. But
remember that anything which is named by a variable (including %oNN
lines) is reachable.
Also remember that just because the final result of a calculation is
small, does not mean that the intermediate calculations are small.
If Maxima crashes, that is a bug, and you should file a bug report
with detailed instructions on how to repeat the crash.
-s