is there any alternative to sys.getsizeof() in PyPy?

Question

I am trying to run a Python (2.7) script with PyPy but I have encountered the following error:

TypeError: sys.getsizeof() is not implemented on PyPy.

A memory profiler using this function is most likely to give results
inconsistent with reality on PyPy.  It would be possible to have
sys.getsizeof() return a number (with enough work), but that may or
may not represent how much memory the object uses.  It doesn't even
make really sense to ask how much *one* object uses, in isolation
with the rest of the system.  For example, instances have maps,
which are often shared across many instances; in this case the maps
would probably be ignored by an implementation of sys.getsizeof(),
but their overhead is important in some cases if they are many
instances with unique maps.  Conversely, equal strings may share
their internal string data even if they are different objects---or
empty containers may share parts of their internals as long as they
are empty.  Even stranger, some lists create objects as you read
them; if you try to estimate the size in memory of range(10**6) as
the sum of all items' size, that operation will by itself create one
million integer objects that never existed in the first place.

Now, I really need to check the size of one nested dict during the execution of the program, is there any alternative to sys.getsizeof() I can use in PyPy? If not, how would I check for the size of a nested object in PyPy?

Answer 1

Alternatively you can gauge the memory usage of your process using

import resource
resource.getrusage(resource.RUSAGE_SELF).ru_maxrss

As your program is executing, getrusage will give total memory consumption of the process in number of bytes or kilobytes. Using this information you can estimate the size of your data structures, and if you begin to use say 50% of your machine's total memory, then you can do something to handle it.