strange behavior creating and deleting files

[Mpourtounis Dimitris <db@wless.gr>]

Hi all,

there seems to be a strange behaviour in the way my system creates and
deletes files, as long as memory allocation is concerned.

running a simple script that continuously creates and deletes files on
tmpfs filesystem, a got the following results:

files created		free memory on system 
-------------		---------------------
0			48180
+6000			47936
+6000			47372
+6000			47372
+6000			47936
+6000			47936
+6000			47936
+6000			47936		(seems stable)
+9000			46976		(what on earth?)
+30000			45084
+80000			45084		(again stable)
+70000			39156		(not again...:( )

and sometime in the morning 25000 MB free RAM, and my system running too
slow

I am sure these are a lot a files and under normal conditions, there
will never be made and deleted so many.

It is that misbehavior of being stable for a long time and then again
allocating memory that concerns me.

I am running linux 2.4.26 on an x86 platform (gcc 3.2.3 uclib 0.9.20) 

Simple sh file:
i=0
while [ 1 ] do
echo "dont allocate more memory please" > $i
rm $i
let i=$i+1
done

Any clue???