Is there any way to empty, destroy, clean a layer in memory from an script?

Question

I'm using very big memory layers:

Is there any way to empty (fast), destroy or clean a layer in memory from an script without exit from this script ?

• Joseph: Perhaps this post might help: Deleting all Features of a Vector Layer in pyQGIS. I don't see why the solution to that post shouldn't work for memory layers.
• Juanma Font: Thanks, Joseph, The solutions discussed in the link you comment are the closest to what I thought. Looking at the sources of QGIS (and GDAL / OGR) I have seen that there is no method like: layer.empy () or similar

Answer 1

Have you tried

del(layer)

These should remove the reference to the layer and call the layer destructor.

Answer 2

In your script you can use:

QgsMapLayerRegistry.instance().removeMapLayer(mem_layer.id())

assuming that the name of memory layer is 'mem_layer'.

• A.A: You have to add the layer to the registry in order to remove it (and delete it) in this case. If you are just working with arrays in memory then you want to delete the handle without adding it to the registry (saving time).