Is there a way to view how much memory a SciPy matrix used?

Question

I know in python it's hard to see the memory usage of an object. Is it easier to do this for SciPy objects (for example, sparse matrix)?

Accepted Answer

you can use array.itemsize (size of the contained type in bytes) and array.flat to obtain the lenght:

```
# a is your array
bytes = a.itemsize * a.size
```

it's not the exact value, as it ignore the whole array infrastructure, but for big array it's the value that matter (and I guess that you care because you have something big)

if you want to use it on a sparse array you have to modify it, as the sparse doesn't have the itemsize attribute. You have to access the dtype and get the itemsize from it:

```
bytes = a.dtype.itemsize * a.size
```

In general I don't think it's easy to evaluate the real memory occupied by a python object...the numpy array is an exception being just a thin layer over a C array

Is there a way to view how much memory a SciPy matrix used?

Solution

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