Sorry, a 1126-line reproduce script? I doubt any of us are going to read through 
that. Please simplify to a 10-15 line example that shows the problem you are 
having.

The link is not meant as a reproduction script but points to the actual source code + solutions I've tried. I tried a long time to better isolate the problem but I couldn't reproduce it in a smaller setting.

I appreciate any hint how I could go about further isolating the problem. I currently only rely on memory_get_usage() and xdebug_debug_zval(). Is there anything more I could do to identify what actually causes the problem? Does PHP provide some internal debugging messages that might indicate why unset() could not release the memory?

Here's what I already tried out:

* I checked that the reference count of $dom is exactly one immediately before the call to unset(): xdebug_debug_zval('dom') reports: dom: (refcount=1, is_ref=0)=class DOMDocument { }.

* I tried gc_enable() + gc_collect_cycles().

* I tried the solution proposed in http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8379829/domdocument-php-memory-leak

* I tried calling $dom->__destruct() before unset() but this will result in an error as DOMDocument apparently does not have a destructor.

* I recursively removed all nodes in the DOM before I unset the variable. It did not make the least difference.

* I tried setting the variable to null before re-using it: $dom = null

None of these showed any effect. I'm simply out of ideas how to simulate the problem in a way that makes it easier for you to reproduce it.

I could track this down to a memory leak unrelated to DOMDocument. I'm still far from isolating the problem. But it's not what I thought. Sorry for the noise.

ok