Re: please suggest a source code analysis tool for debugging memory leak

From:

Lew <lew@lewscanon.com>

Newsgroups:

comp.lang.java.programmer

Date:

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 08:19:36 -0400

Message-ID:

<ArCdnftRC9dESpDVnZ2dnUVZ_ternZ2d@comcast.com>

steve_martin wrote:

Hi, typically, a memory leak occurs because dynamically allocated memory has
become unreachable.

That doesn't apply in Java. If memory becomes unreachable it gets collected.
Memory leaks in Java are more properly called "packratting"; they're caused
by memory *not* becoming unreachable.

problems. Collection classes, such as hash tables and vectors, are common
places to find the cause of a memory leak. This is particularly true if the
class has been declared static and exists for the life of the application. .

Classes almost always exist in the JVM for the life of the application. More
recent JVMs have added the option to collect classes, but in practice most
classes in an app will not fade out of use so the question won't come up for them.

The prevalence of memory leak bugs has led to the development of a number of
debugging tools to detect unreachable memory. Coverity Prevent is one of the
tool that you can use for fixing these kinds of bugs. Coverity Prevent is
also used by the Department of Homeland security to scan many open source
projects.

Since unreachable memory is the opposite of what a memory leak is in Java, I
wonder how much this would help.

--
Lew