Martin v. L�wis wrote:

>  Adal Chiriliuc wrote:
>  > MSVC 7.1 and 8.0 malloc always uses the Windows heap functions
>  > (HeapAlloc & friends) if running on Windows 2000 or newer
>  > (malloc.c and heapinit.c).
>  >
>  > So it seems that for both Linux (gcc) and Win (msvc) the memory is
>  > released to the operating system.
> 
>  How so? HeapFree does not return the memory to the system. From
> 
>  http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/memory/base/heap_function
s.asp
> 
>  "Once the pages are committed, they are not decommitted until the
>  process is terminated or until the heap is destroyed by calling the
>  HeapDestroy function."

http://www.python.org/sf/1389051 agrees with the microsoft
documentation.  (where imaplib runs out of memory after read-
ing 2 megabytes of a 14 megabyte message).

</F>