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From: ncohen@watson.ibm.com (Norman H. Cohen)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Does memory leak?
Date: 24 Mar 1995 21:08:27 GMT
Organization: IBM T.J. Watson Research Center
Distribution: world
Message-ID: <3kvccb$18ru@watnews1.watson.ibm.com>
References: <3kopao$ekg@nef.ens.fr> <EACHUS.95Mar22193719@spectre.mitre.org>
Reply-To: ncohen@watson.ibm.com
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Date: 1995-03-24T21:08:27+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

In article <EACHUS.95Mar22193719@spectre.mitre.org>,
eachus@spectre.mitre.org (Robert I. Eachus) writes: 

|>      There are a very few cases where programs are deliberately
|> designed to leak storage because it is too expensive to avoid it, but
|> these are very rare.  (One case that I had something to do with
|> involves a command line parameter package...it may be possible to
|> determine when the storage required goes away, but in most cases you
|> would be saving less in stack or heap space than you lose to added
|> code space.)

A few drops of water drip from my shower head after I shut off the water,
but as long as the number of drops is bounded by a constant, I don't call
that a leak.

It sounds as if the case you are talking about involves a bounded amount
of storage allocated ONCE at the beginning of the program.  As long as it
does not cause memory to gradually become exhausted as execution
continues, I don't call that a leak either.

The only programs I know of with deliberate memory leaks are those whose
executions are short enough, and whose target machines have enough
virtual memory space, that running out of memory is not a concern.
(This class of programs includes many student programming exercises and
some simple applets and utilities; it includes few if any embedded or
safety-critical programs.)

--
Norman H. Cohen    ncohen@watson.ibm.com