How to detect a memory leak?

Hi, I have other questions. Because these questions don't have anything to do with STL, I might as well post them into a different thread.

My code is turning into a small beast now. I know that I have memory leak somewhere along the code, but because it's bigger than what it was before, I can't trace all the 'new' and 'delete' in it. The question is: How do I detect memory leaks?

BTW, another memory related question. Why doesn't this code work?

Code:

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char *foo;
char foo2[12]="Hello world!";

foo=new char[strlen(foo2)];
strcpy(foo,foo2);
delete[] foo;

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First: What is the [] in front of delete?
Second: strlen("Hello world!") == 13 not 12. You should give it an additional byte for '\0' == NULL that indicates the end of the string in the memory. Its better to write

Code:

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char *foo;
char foo2[]="Hello world!";

foo=new char[strlen(foo2)];
strcpy(foo,foo2);
delete foo;

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The [] in front of delete tells the delete operator that it needs to delete the entire array pointer to by the pointer in the brackets. If you fail to use [] for delete on arrays, it will only delete the first element and not the entire array. So if you have an array of 100 class objects and you call delete without using [] for that array, you will have 99 objects whose constructor is never
called and so are never cleaned up.

Code:

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int *pArray=new int[100];
for (int i=0;i<100;i++)
{
  pArray[i]=i;
}

delete pArray;    //Incorrect
delete [] pArray; //Correct

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Well, acutally, the string was "char[255]" (I used it to read from a file using fgets and since the string's length can't be determined, I used 255). And the problem still occur.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by siavoshkc

First: What is the [] in front of delete?
Second: strlen("Hello world!") == 13 not 12. You should give it an additional byte for '\0' == NULL that indicates the end of the string in the memory. Its better to write

Code:

---

char *foo;
char foo2[]="Hello world!";

foo=new char[strlen(foo2)];
strcpy(foo,foo2);
delete foo;

---

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by Bubba

The [] in front of delete tells the delete operator that it needs to delete the entire array pointer to by the pointer in the brackets. If you fail to use [] for delete on arrays, it will only delete the first element and not the entire array.

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This is actually incorrect. If operator new [] is used to create an array, operator delete [] must be used to release it. Failure to do so yields undefined behaviour according to the standard. In practice, your statement "it will only delete the first element and not the entire array" occurs with some compilers/libraries, but not all.

Sorry I made a big mistake strlen("Hello world!") == 12 so you should write

Code:

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char *foo;
char foo2[]="Hello world!";

foo=new char[strlen(foo2)+1]; //You give foo one additional byte for NULL
strcpy(foo,foo2);
delete[] foo;

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This code worked fine in my VC++.

And about []:
1) <<It was stupid question.
2) How delete operator determines the size of allocated memory pointed by foo?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by siavoshkc

1) If we use [] it will delete both allocated memory and pointer or just allocated memory?
2) How delete operator determines the size of allocated memory pointed by foo?

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It deletes the allocated memory. You can't delete the pointer as long as it resides on the stack. Not conventionally, anyway. After you call delete[] you should still null the pointer you freed, just like a regular call to delete.

I'm not sure how it determines the size in memory. I'd guess it probably maintained the value of the constant used in the new[] operator.

Memory management is implementation-specific. Typically, the memory manager will store a bit of metadata in front of the allocated block, containing at least the size of the block.

Quote:

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If you fail to use [] for delete on arrays, it will only delete the first element and not the entire array.

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Typically true regarding destructors, but the memory will usually be freed completely. Not that it matters, since it's undefined.

So the general consensus is....it's a bad idea either way you go.

Quote:

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Memory management is implementation-specific.

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Its routines should be in msvcrt.dll for Windows , aren't they?

The operator new implementation wil probably be in msvcpxx.dll, where xx is the VC++ version number. Or the debug version of the DLL. Or the static library version, and then compiled into the executable itself.
MS's operator new does, I think, call malloc() in turn, so that you would find in msvcrt.dll, or whatever C runtime DLL/static lib you're using.
Of course, malloc() itself is implemented in terms of HeapAlloc, which is in kernel32.dll - but only in Win9x. In the WinNT-series, it is just an entry in kernel32.dll's export table that actually just forwards to RtlAllocHeap in ntdll.dll.

>> How do I detect memory leaks?
Depending on your IDE or compiler, there are tools available. I don't remember exactly how to set it up, but try searching for _CrtDumpMemoryLeaks (I think this thread might have some information: http://www.codeguru.com/forum/showthread.php?t=312742).

>> char foo2[12]="Hello world!";
While char foo2[]="Hello world!"; works fine, you should know that if you do put in a number, it should be char foo2[13]="Hello world!";

However, you should be using the C++ string class in C++. That is your best bet for removing memory leaks with character strings. Same thing with vector and dynamic arrays.