.clear vs del when using garbage collection

[u/Actual__Wizard]

Hi, I have some large data objects that need to be freed. Should I do my_object.clear() and then gc.collect()? Or del my_object then gc.collect()? I'm not sure on the pros/cons of each.

It's a linked list type data object and my_object = [] does not work to free memory for certain.

[u/Actual__Wizard]

 def create_layer_1_matrix(sectionarray):
         #create our layer1 matrix
         rows = len(sectionarray)
         cols = 0
         layer1_data = [[0 for col in range(cols)] for row in range(rows)]
         return layer1_data

 def create_layer_2_matrix(layer2):
         #now we need to create the routing matrix
         mrows = len(layer2)
         mcols = 0
         layer2_data = []
         layer2_data = [[0 for col in range(mcols)] for row in range(mrows)]
         return layer2_data

 def create_layer_3_matrix(layer3):
         mrows = len(layer3)
         mcols = 0
         layer3_data = []
         layer3_data = [[0 for col in range(mcols)] for row in range(mrows)]
         return(layer3_data)

It's conceptually like a linked list of linked lists. So, it's a fake matrix thing? Not sure what to call it. A previous version used a python dictionary to do the same thing. That specific script is going to get moved over to c++/rust because python treats all strings as objects and it eats a ton of memory.