A question about virtual memory.

[Owen Thomas]

A recent post relating to this topic has prompted me to ask this question.

Looking at the System Monitor, I see that virtual memory begins to fill
when physical memory is near its maximum. However, when physical memory
usage drops, I do not see a drop in virtual memory with a corresponding
rise in physical memory - it seems that data in virtual memory remains
there at least until it is needed. Sometimes it seems that I can have much
more free space in physical memory than I have data in virtual memory.

Why isn't virtual memory transferred to physical memory as soon as or
perhaps not long after the space becomes available? How might I instruct my
computer to behave as I might expect? Indeed, am I expecting too much of
the wrong thing?
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