Re: [OctDev] is memory leak of figure

[Ben Abbott]

On Mar 30, 2011, at 9:53 PM, Daniel J Sebald wrote:

> On 03/30/2011 08:45 PM, welkin zzp wrote:
>> Hi,
>>      When I close a figure window, I observed that the gnuplot and
>> gnuplot_x11 processes were always in the system,but didn't work, until
>> quit octave . I didn't known if it's a memory leak ,but I have to
>> frequently quit octave after having close few figure windows. The
>> version of octave is 3.4.0 on ubuntu systerm.
> 
> Welkin,
> 
> This topic might be more appropriate for the maintainers list, so I'm cc'ing 
> there.
> 
> From what I recall, Octave currently launches a separate instance of gnuplot 
> for each figure.  (Because gnuplot only saves the data/state for the most 
> current plot.)  But I'm not sure if what you describe is the intended 
> behavior or not, i.e., that gnuplot hangs around in case Octave needs to use 
> it again.  If not, perhaps you could give a more detailed description with 
> examples.  Maybe the behavior can be improved.
> 
> Dan

Welkin,

When you "close" a figure, do you type ...

        close (hfig)

.... or do you close the figure window using the mouse?

If the first, then the gnuplot session associated with the figure should 
terminate. However, for the latter, the gnuplot session remains open. Since 
there is no synchronous communication from gnuplot to octave, there is no 
method for Octave to become aware that the figure has been closed.

If this functionality is important for you, please try using the fltk backend. 
This can be turned on by ...

        graphics_toolkit fltk

Ben