Need a tool to detect memory leaks in C code

Question

Is there a good application (that has some kind of gui) for testing memory leaks in c code. I would really like to test my assignment/programme but being very new to this, i struggle with using the terminal to do things, especially using gdb for debugging (to me it feels like a blast from the past, where i could be using some visual debugger).

Thanks for the help

edit: platform doesn't matter - i am running everything ;)

Answer 1

Depending on the platform (you don't mention it) Valgrind is fantastic on Linux systems. It has no GUI, but doesn't need one.

Just run valgrind <path to your application + arguments> and it will run your application and spit out any errors during memory operations.

Add the --leak-check=full and --show-reachable=yes options after valgrind to get stack-traces of where your memory leaks originate.

Answer 2

On Windows, HeapMon may be of some interest, although it does not explicitly tell you where are your leaks.

Answer 3

There's a gui for analyzing valgrind results: http://alleyoop.sourceforge.net/. Besides, there's (non-free) purify which is great, and i believe there's a trial. It has a GUI.

---

Answer 4

Purify is a great application for this.

Answer 5

valgrind is pretty good on Linux, but it only has a command line interface

Answer 6

If you're using Microsoft's DevStudio then the C run-time library has plenty of memory allocation tracking tools already built-in:

The Debug Heap

_CrtSetDbgFlag

It amazes me how few programmers seem to be aware of these tools!