[Matplotlib-users] memory usage (leakage?) in ipython interactive mode

[Gary R. <gr...@bi...>]

Is there a summary somewhere of the current state of knowledge about 
memory leaks when using the pylab interface interactively? Doing 
plot(rand(1000000)) or matshow(rand(1000,1000)) for example eats a big 
chunk of memory (tried with TkAgg and WxAgg in Windows (mpl v0.98.5.2) 
and Linux (mpl v0.98.3)), most of which is not returned when the window 
is closed. The same goes if you create an array, plot it, and explicitly 
del it after closing the window. I've seen lots of posts over the years 
about memory leaks, but there's nothing in the FAQ about this. I found 
old posts about similar things, but nothing that had a clear resolution.

thanks,
Gary