python resource_error ai_generated partial

MemoryError

ID: python/memoryerror

Also available as: JSON · Markdown
55%Fix Rate
78%Confidence
95Evidence
2023-01-01First Seen

Version Compatibility

VersionStatusIntroducedDeprecatedNotes
311 active — — —

Root Cause

Process exceeded available RAM. Common with large datasets, recursive structures, or memory leaks.

generic

Workarounds

  1. 82% success Process data in chunks/batches instead of loading all into memory 
    for chunk in pd.read_csv(path, chunksize=10000):

    Sources: https://docs.python.org/3/library/functions.html#iter

  2. 78% success Use memory-mapped files or streaming approaches (mmap, generators) 
    import mmap; with open('large.bin','rb') as f: mm = mmap.mmap(f.fileno(), 0, access=mmap.ACCESS_READ)

    Sources: https://docs.python.org/3/library/mmap.html

Dead Ends

Common approaches that don't work:

  1. Increase swap space 80% fail

    Swap is orders of magnitude slower, making the program unusable

  2. Upgrade to more RAM 60% fail

    Often the data processing approach itself is inefficient

Error Chain

Leads to:
Preceded by:
Frequently confused with: