How to find memory leak in a C++ code/project?

Question

I am a C++ programmer on the Windows platform. I am using Visual Studio 2008.

I usually end up in the code with memory leaks.

Normally I find the memory leak by inspecting the code, but it is cumbersome and is not always a good approach.

Since I can't afford a paid memory leak detection tool, I wanted you guys to suggest the best possible ways to avoid memory leaks.

1. I want to the know how the programmer can find memory leaks.
2. Is there any standard or procedure one should follow to ensure there is no memory leak in the program?

Answer 1

Instructions

Things You'll Need

• Proficiency in C++
• C++ compiler
• Debugger and other investigative software tools

1

Understand the operator basics. The C++ operator "new" allocates heap memory. The "delete" operator frees heap memory. For every "new," you should use a "delete" so that you free the same memory you allocated:

char* str = new char [30]; // Allocate 30 bytes to house a string.

delete [] str; // Clear those 30 bytes and make str point nowhere.

2

Reallocate memory only if you've deleted. In the code below, str acquires a new address with the second allocation. The first address is lost irretrievably, and so are the 30 bytes that it pointed to. Now they're impossible to free, and you have a memory leak:

char* str = new char [30]; // Give str a memory address.

// delete [] str; // Remove the first comment marking in this line to correct.

str = new char [60]; /* Give str another memory address with
                                                    the first one gone forever.*/

delete [] str; // This deletes the 60 bytes, not just the first 30.

3

Watch those pointer assignments. Every dynamic variable (allocated memory on the heap) needs to be associated with a pointer. When a dynamic variable becomes disassociated from its pointer(s), it becomes impossible to erase. Again, this results in a memory leak:

char* str1 = new char [30];

char* str2 = new char [40];

strcpy(str1, "Memory leak");

str2 = str1; // Bad! Now the 40 bytes are impossible to free.

delete [] str2; // This deletes the 30 bytes.

delete [] str1; // Possible access violation. What a disaster!

4

Be careful with local pointers. A pointer you declare in a function is allocated on the stack, but the dynamic variable it points to is allocated on the heap. If you don't delete it, it will persist after the program exits from the function:

void Leak(int x){

char* p = new char [x];

// delete [] p; // Remove the first comment marking to correct.

}

5

Pay attention to the square braces after "delete." Use "delete" by itself to free a single object. Use "delete" [] with square brackets to free a heap array. Don't do something like this:

char* one = new char;

delete [] one; // Wrong

char* many = new char [30];

delete many; // Wrong!

6

If the leak yet allowed - I'm usually seeking it with deleaker (check it here: http://deleaker.com).

Thanks!

Answer 2

MTuner is a free multi platform memory profiling, leak detection and analysis tool supporting MSVC, GCC and Clang compilers. Features include:

• timeline based history of memory usage and live memory blocks
• powerful memory operation filtering based on heap, memory tag, time range, etc.
• SDK for manual instrumentation with full source code
• continuous integration support through command line usage
• call stack tree and tree map navigation
• much more.

Users can profile any software targeting platforms with GCC or Clang cross compilers. MTuner comes with built in support for Windows, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 3 platforms.

Answer 3

In addition to the tools and methodes provided in the other anwers, static code analysis tools can be used to detect memory leaks (and other issues as well). A free an robust tool is Cppcheck. But there are a lot of other tools available. Wikipedia has a list of static code analysis tools.

Answer 4

You can use some techniques in your code to detect memory leak. The most common and most easy way to detect is, define a macro say, DEBUG_NEW and use it, along with predefined macros like __FILE__ and __LINE__ to locate the memory leak in your code. These predefined macros tell you the file and line number of memory leaks.

DEBUG_NEW is just a MACRO which is usually defined as:

#define DEBUG_NEW new(__FILE__, __LINE__)
#define new DEBUG_NEW

So that wherever you use new, it also can keep track of the file and line number which could be used to locate memory leak in your program.

And __FILE__, __LINE__ are predefined macros which evaluate to the filename and line number respectively where you use them!

Read the following article which explains the technique of using DEBUG_NEW with other interesting macros, very beautifully:

A Cross-Platform Memory Leak Detector

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From Wikpedia,

Debug_new refers to a technique in C++ to overload and/or redefine operator new and operator delete in order to intercept the memory allocation and deallocation calls, and thus debug a program for memory usage. It often involves defining a macro named DEBUG_NEW, and makes new become something like new(_FILE_, _LINE_) to record the file/line information on allocation. Microsoft Visual C++ uses this technique in its Microsoft Foundation Classes. There are some ways to extend this method to avoid using macro redefinition while still able to display the file/line information on some platforms. There are many inherent limitations to this method. It applies only to C++, and cannot catch memory leaks by C functions like malloc. However, it can be very simple to use and also very fast, when compared to some more complete memory debugger solutions.

Answer 5

Valgrind http://valgrind.org/

and

GDB http://www.gnu.org/software/gdb/