Simulate manual memory management to reduce RAM usage?

[Palli]

@greatpet

for heap-allocated local objects that do not “escape” the function (e.g. returned or passed to another function), is it possible for Julia’s compiler to deallocate the memory as soon as the object is out of scope

Yes, there’s a brand-new package for that, see at:

Avoiding allocations of small but non-trivial arrays (work array alternative?)

There’s a brand new package that seems like made for you. It’s probably not yet registered (you can still use/try it), nor announced: In theory Julia could heap-allocate for you and free before exit of barw_array, but it would be slower. Or allocate on the stack, but it’s limited so dangerous, you don’t know how large the array is going to be, so I doubt that’s a better policy (or check at runtime the size and only stack-allocate if small).

I would try it (in about a week, in case there are bugs). It’s not just for small objects. It’s faster, but actually doesn’t reduce “RAM usage”, just allocation overhead.