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| <h4 class="subsection">3.2.3 Allocation Debugging</h4> |
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| <p><a name="index-allocation-debugging-296"></a><a name="index-malloc-debugger-297"></a> |
| A complicated task when programming with languages which do not use |
| garbage collected dynamic memory allocation is to find memory leaks. |
| Long running programs must assure that dynamically allocated objects are |
| freed at the end of their lifetime. If this does not happen the system |
| runs out of memory, sooner or later. |
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| <p>The <code>malloc</code> implementation in the GNU C library provides some |
| simple means to detect such leaks and obtain some information to find |
| the location. To do this the application must be started in a special |
| mode which is enabled by an environment variable. There are no speed |
| penalties for the program if the debugging mode is not enabled. |
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| <li><a accesskey="1" href="Tracing-malloc.html#Tracing-malloc">Tracing malloc</a>: How to install the tracing functionality. |
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| <li><a accesskey="3" href="Tips-for-the-Memory-Debugger.html#Tips-for-the-Memory-Debugger">Tips for the Memory Debugger</a>: Some more or less clever ideas. |
| <li><a accesskey="4" href="Interpreting-the-traces.html#Interpreting-the-traces">Interpreting the traces</a>: What do all these lines mean? |
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