Hi Mark,

Thank you for your great writeup!

Mark H Weaver <mhw@netris.org> writes:
> * The (format #f ...) allocates a temporary string output port, and that
…
>   with.  Using 'number->string' there would reduce memory allocation of
>   the loop above by an order of magnitude or more.
…
> * The fact that you're using 'set!' to mutate 'longer' forces a
>   heap-allocated variable object to be allocated for 'longer', whereas
>   otherwise it could be allocated on the stack.  See section 9.3.4
>   (Variables and the VM) in the Guile 2.2 manual for more on this, and
>   how 'set!' often makes things much less efficient.
>
> * Since 'longer' is allocated within the loop, a new copy of that
>   (heap-allocated) variable object is created for each iteration.

I implemented a version which avoids both points via let-recursion and
number->string:

    (define (make-bgl lis cnt)
      "a bogus longer list"
      (let loop ((longer (cons (number->string cnt) lis))
                 (cnt cnt))
        ;; periodically report statistics
        (when (eq? 0 (modulo cnt (* 1000 1000)))
          (begin (format #t "~A " cnt)  (avg-gc-cpu-time)))
        (cond
         ;; periodically trim the list
         ((and (eq? 0 (modulo cnt (* 4123 1123)) (> (length longer) 0)))
          (loop (list)
                cnt))
         ;; end recursion
         ((eq? 0 cnt)
          lis)
         (else
          (loop (cons (number->string cnt) longer)
                (- cnt 1))))))

This does indeed spend much less time in GC, but its memory usage is
still rising rapidly. Did I unknowingly create a memory leak?

Best wishes,
Arne
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