Reusing module references in Python (Matplotlib)

Question

I think I may have misunderstood something here... But here goes.

I'm using the psd method in matplotlib inside a loop, I'm not making it plot anything, I just want the numerical result, so:

import pylab as pyl
...
psdResults = pyl.psd(inputData, NFFT=512, Fs=sampleRate, window=blackman)

But that's being looped 36 times every time I run the function it's in.

I'm getting a slow memory leak when I run my program over time, so used 'heapy' to monitor this, and every time I run the function, it adds 36 to these 3 heaps:

dict matplotlib.line.Line26
dict matplotlib.transforms.CompositeAffine2D
dict matplotlib.path.Path

I can only conclude that each time I use the psd method it merely adds it to some dictionary somewhere, whereas I want to effectively wipe the memory - i.e. reset pylab each loop so it doesn't store anything.

I could be misinterpreting heapy but it seems pretty clear that pylab is just growing each loop even though I only want to use it's psd method, I don't want it saving the results anywhere itself !

Cheers

Steve Tjoa · Accepted Answer · 2010-03-01 15:40:02Z

3

Try this:

from matplotlib import mlab
psdResults = mlab.psd(inputData, NFFT=512, Fs=sampleRate, window=blackman)

Does that improve the situation?

answered Mar 1, 2010 at 15:40

Steve Tjoa

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3 Comments

Duncan Tait Over a year ago

Excellent, yes it has... That has also highlighted the difference in import types too. Thanks alot! Just got to fix the other memory leaks now..!

Duncan Tait Over a year ago

In fact that's actually fixed all of them. Awesome.

Steve Tjoa Over a year ago

Wow, great! If you use ipython, the command pylab.psd?? will show you the source code. From there, I traced psd back to Axes and then mlab. This is how ipython introspection can help determine what is really going on.

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