Timer memory usage

Hi

Can anyone tell me why when you use a timer with a small interval that the memory usage goes up?

E.g with this code (you'll need a text field called fpst on the stage):

var fps:Timer = new Timer(20, 0);
fps.addEventListener("timer", fpsHandler);
function fpsHandler(event:TimerEvent):void {
fpst.text = System.totalMemory;
}
fps.start()

Wait a few seconds and the memory usage will go up. If you increase the value from 20 to 200 the memory will still go up but very very slowly.

Is this known behaviour? Im building a game which uses the timer to execute code everyframe so I need it to execute very fast.

Is there another solution? I dont want to use enterFrame handlers.

I don't think it is a lot, because an empty movie already uses 7311360 bytes memory.

Why dont you want to use enterFrame if you want something to happen every frame?

If you change the value to 1 you can see the memory usage going up faster. If the movie is run for hours (which, as it will be used in a game it will be) it would cause the computer to eventually crash.

Should I consider this a bug with Flash 9?

I've also tried using weak referencing (i think) using this code :

var fps:Timer = new Timer(20, 0);
fps.addEventListener("timer", fpsHandler, false, 0, true);
function fpsHandler(event:TimerEvent):void {
fpst.text = System.totalMemory;
}
fps.start()

and tried waiting 10 minutes to see if the Garbabe collector would delete whatever it is causing the memory to go up but to no avail.

What am I doing wrong? I assume a lot of flash game developers use timers...

What version of the player are you using?
It looks like this might be fixed in the next update (though I have not tested over prolonged periods of time).

... actually 9r28 seems to be handling it pretty well too.

I think memory is going up because of all the timer event objects that get created.
The garbage collector is lazy and it can take a few minutes before it kicks in. I see it in my project, where memory usage goes up all the time, and once it gets to a certain point some of it gets reclaimed by the gc, and usage starts going up again.
Don't worry about it, if you wait long enough memory will get freed.

Thanks for the info! I hope you're right.