Question

I just ran a python program in the Mac OS Terminal, and there is unusual memory leak.

The program is simple like this:

for i in xrange(1000000000, 2000000000, 10):
  i2 = i * i
  print i, i2, str(i2)[::2]
  if str(i2)[::2] == '1234567890':
    break

When the program is running, it consumes more and more memory till it use up all my memory.
When I terminate the program, my Terminal.app still consumes a lot of memory, so I guess it’s a bug in Terminal.app?

Does anyone have similar experience?

Answer 1

This isn’t a bug; it’s actually a feature. Terminal.app, like many other terminal emulators, saves recent output in a buffer so that you can scroll back (with page up or the scroll bar). You can limit how large this is by going to Terminal -> Preferences -> Settings and setting the scrollback limit to something other than Unlimited.