Re: Discrepancy between actual RAM usage by Octave and "whos" output

[Mike Miller]

On Sun, Oct 28, 2018 at 11:05:44 -0500, PhilipNienhuis wrote:
> What is the reason that actual RAM usage is so much larger than suggested by
> "whos"? Where does the overhead come from?

Cell arrays have a lot of memory overhead. Compare the memory used by
Octave instantiating

    A = rand (1e7, 10);

with the memory used for

    A = num2cell (rand (1e7, 10));

On my system, I see about 850 MB used for the first, 3.9 GB for the
second.

> A corrollary is that esp. for unwary users, "whos" actually gives deceiving
> results.

Yes, especially if you are using cell arrays with a large number of
cells.

-- 
mike

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