Are memory leaks “undefined behavior” class proble

Question

Turns out many innocently looking things are undefined behavior in C++. For example, once a non-null pointer has been delete'd even printing out that pointer value is undefined behavior.

Now memory leaks are definitely bad. But what class situation are they - defined, undefined or what other class of behavior?

Answer 1

Straight forward answer: The standard doesn't define what happens when you leak memory, thus it is "undefined". It's implicitly undefined though, which is less interesting than the explicitly undefined things in the standard.

Answer 2

If the space shuttle must take off in two minutes, and I have a choice between putting it up with code that leaks memory and code that has undefined behavior, I'm putting in the code that leaks memory.

But most of us aren't usually in such a situation, and if we are, it's probably by a failure further up the line. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I'm reading this question as, "Which sin will get me into hell faster?"

Probably the undefined behavior, but in reality both.