Depends on the setup, but even when it doesn't, it mallocs a huge chunk of memory at the start, lets the script run, allocate away and never free anything. Then

Depends on the setup, but even when it doesn't, it mallocs a huge chunk of memory at the start, lets the script run, allocate away and never free anything. Then, when the script is done, it frees the whole chunk in one fell swoop. So for some definition of “process” it holds regardless - it’s just not always a real OS process. They added GC at some point to allow scripts to run longer (eg for websocket servers) but even then last I checked you had to manually enable it.