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Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2007 12:29:03 -0700 (PDT)
From: wimxa <wimxa AT yahoo DOT com>
To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: Huge memory leak, probably related to making new processes
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Try executing:

find -exec echo {} \;

Simple command. This one, however, leaks at about 5kB/s. I tried the
following:

find|xargs echo

This one didn't appear to leak, but then I tried this one:

find|xargs -n 1 echo

This also leaked at around the same rate. Then I tried the following:

COUNTER=1
while [ $COUNTER -lt 123456 ]; do echo $COUNTER; let COUNTER=$COUNTER+1;
done

This one did not leak, making me believe that this is related to new process
execution. I tried this:

COUNTER=1
while [ $COUNTER -lt 123456 ]; do (echo $COUNTER); let COUNTER=$COUNTER+1;
done

and it started leaking pretty fast (maybe 4kB/s).

I searched for this, but I couldn't find anything useful (or I couldn't find
any good search queries). A few questions: 
- Is this a bug or am I just wrong in part or the whole of the above?
- If so, is there a way to prevent or circumvent this?
- Again, if it is a bug, is there a way to free this memory somehow without
restarting the computer (or anything involving closing all/majority of
applications, like logout)? It appears that no process "owns" this memory,
but it is disappearing (i.e. true leak), so a simple taskkill is not a
solution.


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