How to calculate used memory of a m file

How can I calculate the total memory used by an m file?

Answer 1

[Jan]

You can't.

You can use the command memory to estimate the memory consumption while the m-function is running. But this cannot be an exact measurement, because the the used memory depends on many different factors. E.g. a simple loop can consume more memory as it needs:

% *no* pre-allocation!
for i = 1:1e6
  x(i) = 1;
end

Although the program needs just 8MB, the memory manager has to work extremly hard. There is no direct method to measure the problem quantitatively, because after the loop is ready, a garbage collection can reduce the consumed memory again.

Please explain the underlying problem. Perhaps a better solution canbe found.

Answer 2

[Friedrich]

Like Jan said, you can't.

But this is a nice tool and maybe it helps you.

http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/8169

On Windows Systems you can use:

 feature memstats

to get detailed memory information.