Hi Stephen, Out of curiosity, I tried the test case, and here are my results: MRI 1.8.6 pl 111, memory grows with 80Mb/sec rate (!!!) Latest MRI 1.8 branch: memory grows with 80Mb/sec rate too MRI 1.9 - memory doesn't grow JRuby 1.1RC2 - memory doesn't grow Rubinius - memory grows at 500Kb/sec Thanks, --Vladimir