The following uses the new --stagestats option to report on the amount
of memory consumed and PMCs allocated at each stage of compilation.
I'm running it on four NQP scripts; each script has one more "say(n);"
statement than the one before it.


                              -------Memory=------    ------PMCs------
                      Sec       Alloc       Used       Total    Active

pmichaud@kiwi:~/p6/nqp$ for i in x1 x2 x3 x4; do echo "$i:"; cat $i; ./nqp --stagestats=2 $i >/dev/null; echo ""; done
x1:
say(1);
Stage start      :   0.000     7294976     5887747     41820     41508
Stage parse      :   0.048    20795392    18388950    137700    137406
Stage past       :   0.000    20803584    18401440    137700    137469
Stage post       :   0.004    22114304    19641141    143310    143189
Stage pir        :   0.001    22589440    20139592    145860    145452
Stage evalpmc    :   0.002    22904832    20196396    145860    145647

x2:
say(1);
say(2);
Stage start      :   0.000     7294976     5887779     41820     41508
Stage parse      :   0.051    21258240    18825625    140250    140154
Stage past       :   0.000    21270528    18838115    140250    140217
Stage post       :   0.004    22646784    20132386    146370    146189
Stage pir        :   0.001    23134208    20646346    148920    148529
Stage evalpmc    :   0.002    23445504    20703291    148920    148724

x3:
say(1);
say(2);
say(3);
Stage start      :   0.000     7294976     5887811     41820     41508
Stage parse      :   0.052    21729280    19263668    143310    142902
Stage past       :   0.000    21745664    19276158    143310    142965
Stage post       :   0.004    23162880    20624966    149430    149189
Stage pir        :   0.001    23932928    21153098    151980    151600
Stage evalpmc    :   0.002    23986176    21210183    151980    151795

x4:
say(1);
say(2);
say(3);
say(4);
Stage start      :   0.000     7294976     5887843     41820     41508
Stage parse      :   0.053    22183936    19701032    145860    145650
Stage past       :   0.000    22200320    19713522    145860    145713
Stage post       :   0.004    23674880    21116867    152490    152189
Stage pir        :   0.001    24453120    21659123    155040    154671
Stage evalpmc    :   0.002    24510464    21716348    155040    154866

pmichaud@kiwi:~/p6/nqp$


Apparent result:  each say(n); statement requires ~2700 active PMCs and ~400KB of memory for parse+past.