Memory Leak

Depends on	Dynamic Memory Allocation

A so-called “memory leak” is a case where dynamically allocated memory is not released when it is finished with. This is normally a result of bad programming practice.

The effect is often that more memory is claimed instead of recycling the existing resource. This will cause a slowdown as a process’ memory ‘footprint’ increases (resulting in extra paging) and, eventually, a crash of that process because there is no more resource for it.

In the worst case, other processes and even the O.S. could crash due to an apparent lack of resource.

Memory leaks are (sadly!) not uncommon in applications processes. An operating system such as Unix also keeps track of the memory allocated to each process and will recover every resource it claimed when it terminates. This makes a leak less likely to be a fatal problem.

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Articles on Memory

About this resource • Arrays • Cache • Caching • Direct Memory Access (DMA) • Dirty Bit • Dynamic Memory Allocation • Memory • Memory Barrier • Memory Fault • Memory Leak • Memory Management • Memory Management Unit (MMU) • Memory Mapped Files • Memory Mapping • Memory Mapping Example • Memory Mapping Extra • Memory Pages • Memory Protection • Memory Segmentation • Memory Sizes • Monitoring page behaviour • Page Eviction • Paging • Paging States • Pointer Arithmetic • Pointers • Relocatable Code • Resources • Shared Memory • Structures • Translation Look-aside Buffer (TLB) • Virtual Memory • Write Buffer