We're constantly loading new classes, dymanically created from database information. Now, theoretically, we have a finite number of classes, so the memory usage from loading these things should be finite itself (and that limit should be hit rather quickly). However, I'm not positive this is the case. Anyway know much about the finer points of this?
Are you cleaning up the symbol tables after you're done using these new classes, or are they being re-used? We found in Class::Prototyped that each new class takes up around 1.5-2K of memory; more (of course) with methods. You can clean up the symbol table when you're done with code like this (assumes $package does not contain '::'):
no strict 'refs';
foreach my $key ( keys %{"$package\::"} ) {
delete ${"$package\::"}{$key};
}
# this only works because we're not a multi-level package:
delete( $main::{"$package\::"} );
