Does dropping objects really free memory?

[Fabio Mascelloni]

In each step of my simulation, the Agents involved have to perform a G.A. on
a population represented by an Array object.In each generation, the old
population is replaced by a new one (traversing the array and performing the
- atOffset: put: ; method), so the old objects become garbage (they're no
more referenced).
The initial population is created in a separate Zone that is allocated at
the beginning of each step and dropped after the G.A has been performed.
However,though the entire Zone is dropped at each step, memory usage
increases constantly ( with an 8 agents simulation, after about 60 minutes
of execution Windows NT task manager says it's using  about 76400 K !).
What could be the reason?
Fabio.




                  ==================================
   Swarm-Support is for discussion of the technical details of the day
   to day usage of Swarm.  For list administration needs (esp.
   [un]subscribing), please send a message to <address@hidden>
   with "help" in the body of the message.