def object_memory():
    """ Sum of the size of gc-tracked objects.
        Can be useful to summarize, say, the before-and-after difference
         of loading in data, building inices, and such.

        Does NOT reflect the amount of process memory, because it does not count things like:
          the interpreter,(~3 MB+?),
          interpreter overhead,
          libraries,
          data stored in C extensions (think numpy and such),
          shared memory
        ...most of which can be anywhere from next to nothing up to a _lot_.

        sys.getsizeof() is >=py2.6  (though there are imitations of it for earlier versions)
    """
    import gc,sys
    return sum(sys.getsizeof(o)  for o in gc.get_objects())