Why does a single loop cause a memory leak?

Question

I'm facing with a very strange behaviour. With this dummy code:

 static void Main( string[] args )
    {
        int i = 0;

        while ( true )
        {
            i++;

            String giro = "iteration " + i;

            Console.WriteLine(giro);

            Thread.Sleep(40);
        }
    }

Using perfom the private bytes are increasing.

img http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2478017/memory.gif

How is it possible?

I thought GC takes care of these stuffs.

Moreover, if I compare memory behavior of this with a version in which i force GC collection every 10 iterations, the result is (for me) surprising:

The green process is the one with no GC.COllect(), and black one is the other.

Could you help me to understand the issue?

Thanks!

Answer 1

You're creating a bunch of strings. The GC hasn't seen fit to collect them yet. Eventually the memory graph will plateau. The GC works fine - there's no problems here :)

Answer 2

The GC doesn't tidy up memory straightaway. That would be very inefficient.