Original ticket http://projects.scipy.org/numpy/ticket/1356 on 2010-01-10 by trac user maxy, assigned to unknown.

loadtxt() leaves objects behind that the python garbage collector can't clean up. Probably not a big issue, but very annoying when hunting other memory leaks.

In [1]: from numpy import *
In [2]: import gc
In [3]: gc.collect(); gc.garbage
Out[3]: 12
Out[3]: []
In [4]: data = loadtxt('painting30sec.dat.gz')
In [5]: gc.collect(); gc.garbage
Out[5]: 10
Out[5]: [<gzip on 0x7f81c8578d88>]
In [6]: data = loadtxt('painting30sec.dat.gz')
In [7]: gc.collect(); gc.garbage
Out[7]: 10
Out[7]: [<gzip on 0x7f81c8578d88>, <gzip on 0x7f81c8583320>]