Sunday, September 22, 2024

Re: Need some information about fork(2)

Дана 24/09/22 09:08PM, Otto Moerbeek написа:
> All correct, but still, on process exit all resources used by a
> program are cleaned up. In that sense it is not a memory leak to not
> call free. Especially for one-time allocations.

Still, while most OSes (including OpenBSD) do free the leaked memory on
program termination, there are some which don't.[1] I think it is
better to make a habit of free(3)ing every successfully allocated chunk
of memory and err on the side of redundancy.


> It is differrent if the malloc is e.g. in a loop, causing memory usage
> to grow while executing the program. That is a memory leak you want to
> fix, especially if the program is a long running one, like a daemon.

Or a web browser. Leaks are more noticeable in complex software left
running for a long time.


[1]: https://stackoverflow.com/a/2975844/184064

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