Re: memory use array vs ref to array

[NetWallah]

According to this article, Each array element consumes a minimum of 24 bytes.

Your 4.5 Gigs of memory will accommodate a maximum of 185,834 elements.

How does this compare with the record count in your file ?

More relevant is the question - WHY do you need to read the entire file into memory?

Typical/efficient parsing handles the file one line at a time.

IF it is necessary to store the file in memory, would it suffice to store the file in a scalar ? (You could do that by setting $/=undef; prior to reading the file).

[hippo]

According to this article, Each array element consumes a minimum of 24 bytes. Your 4.5 Gigs of memory will accommodate a maximum of 185,834 elements.

Respectfully, I think you are out by a factor of 1000 (or 1024) here. Should it not be around 185 million elements?

[dkhosla1]

There are 22,186,287 lines in the file so about 22M records.