Mailinglist Archive: opensuse-programming (23 mails)

[peter burden <peter.burden@xxxxxxxxx>]

Jerry Feldman wrote:
> On Monday 19 June 2006 10:56 am, Verdi March wrote:
>   
> > Hi,
> >
> > On Monday 19 June 2006 22:09, Jerry Feldman wrote:
> >     
> > > No. That is because the pointer is available in main. If you allocate
> > > memory inside of a function, and return from that function without
> > > freeing that memory or without providing a pointer to that memory,
> > > that is unreachable.
> > >       
> > I tried the above with a simpler testcase:
> >
> > int main() {
> >     int *iptr
> >     iptr (int *) malloc(sizeof(int));
> >     return 0;
> > }
> >
> > and valgrind still detect a memory leak. Obviously I hold a
> > pointer (iptr) to the allocated memory, or do I misunderstand
> > your explanation?
> >     
> This is a memory leak because you return from main() without freeing memory.
> The following code is NOT a memory leak:
> int main() {
>     int *iptr
>     iptr (int *) malloc(sizeof(int));
>     free(iptr);
>     return 0;
>
>   
However the following reports the block as "still reachable"

#include        <stdlib.h>
static  int     *iptr;
int     main()
{
       iptr = (int *)malloc(sizeof (int));
       return 0;
}

As commented by Phil Betts, valgrind checks the state of
memory AFTER main() exits.