Maxima eating up memory?



> Can you give us slightly more information about which version of Maxima
> and what lisp you're using? (Also, I presume this isn't wxMaxima?)

I first discovered the problem within wxMaxima and then verified 
with Maxima.

Maxima version: 5.25.1
Maxima build date: 9:14 9/5/2011
Host type: i686-apple-darwin10.8.0
Lisp implementation type: SBCL
Lisp implementation version: 1.0.47

> and before running it, here is what SBCL thinks its memory usage is:

(%i1) :lism (room)

Dynamic space usage is:   61,992,984 bytes.
Read-only space usage is:      2,792 bytes.
Static space usage is:         1,712 bytes.
Control stack usage is:        1,848 bytes.
Binding stack usage is:          208 bytes.
Garbage collection is currently enabled.

Breakdown for dynamic space:
   19,079,456 bytes for    20,201 code objects.
   14,691,048 bytes for 1,836,381 cons objects.
    7,705,680 bytes for    75,012 simple-character-string objects.
    6,030,048 bytes for   114,380 simple-vector objects.
    5,694,472 bytes for   131,236 instance objects.
    8,812,912 bytes for   207,821 other objects.
   62,013,616 bytes for 2,385,031 dynamic objects (space total.)

And top says

sbcl    12M     244K    60M     102M    2147M   8478  4500  sleeping

If I now copy and paste my sample, and run it for 1 minute of CPU 
time, top says

sbcl    16M     244K    67M+    37M     2147M   8478  4500  running

The figures did not seem to change a lot, but the amount of "free" 
memory according to top is reduced by 70MB. They come back pretty 
immediately after I quit Maxima.


(%i3) :lisp (room)

Dynamic space usage is:   57,778,272 bytes.
Read-only space usage is:      2,792 bytes.
Static space usage is:         1,712 bytes.
Control stack usage is:        1,848 bytes.
Binding stack usage is:          208 bytes.
Garbage collection is currently enabled.

Breakdown for dynamic space:
   19,079,456 bytes for    20,201 code objects.
   13,958,944 bytes for 1,744,868 cons objects.
    6,029,224 bytes for   114,373 simple-vector objects.
    5,597,416 bytes for   126,446 instance objects.
    3,979,576 bytes for    37,765 simple-character-string objects.
    9,585,424 bytes for   424,055 other objects.
   58,230,040 bytes for 2,467,708 dynamic objects (space total.)


As the missing memory does not seem to be used by Maxima, could this 
be an OS problem? I will check it on a Linux machine.


Best regards


Philipp