1. I keep a large collection of text data as a list in memory {text...}
2. I want to search this data.

Here's what happens. 

  set match [lsearch -regexp $x {needle}]
-> memory usage of the tcl process raises by about 200%! (before: 80MB, after: 200MB)

  foreach k $x { if {[regexp -nocase {needle} $k]} {puts "match"} 
- >ditto

  foreach k $x { if {[regexp -nocase {needle} [list $k]]} {puts "match"} 
-> Heureka! total memory usage stays at 80MB.

Note that:
   for {set i 0} {$i<120000} {incr i} { set j [lindex $x $i]; string reverse $j; lset x $i $j}
-> memory usage stays at 80MB

I'm still not quite sure what's going on, it's about keeping lists 'pure' I guess.
I'm now consulting these pages:

[list]
[shimmering]
[pure list].



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!!!!!!
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!!!!!!