Re: tmp gets full when plotting many images

[Daniel J Sebald]

John W. Eaton wrote:
> On 26-Mar-2007, Søren Hauberg wrote:
>
> |    When plotting many images (i.e. showing a movie) I run out of disc 
> | space, because the plotting system doesn't seem to be cleaning up after 
> | itself as long as Octave still running. Can we make the system delete 
> | tmp files when they are no longer needed?
>
> We eliminated tmp files for lines and surfaces.  I don't know of a way
> to eliminate them for images.

Well, there is nothing unique really about image data in terms of transfer.  I 
just assumed that sending large images as ASCII data through a pipe isn't 
efficient.  So there is that possible change that would solve the persistent 
temp files issue.

This could be improved perhaps by utilizing the fact that data through the pipe 
can now also be binary.  (I doubt there are any pipes out there that restrict 
data to 7 bits, ASCII, rather than 8 bits.)  Let me know if you want to try this 
approach.


>  Octave has no way of knowing when
> gnuplot is finished with a file.  Although it might seem that we
> should be able to delete tmp files in __go_draw_figure__, I don't
> think we can do that, because there is no way to guarantee that
> gnuplot has finished processing the previous plot before we have
> started sending new commands.

The other alternative might be a new mode for gnuplot that deletes files after 
they are read, no longer needed, and closed.  I'll ask the gnuplot list if this 
is generally a good feature.

Dan