Abstract

Dynamic memory usage in C++ can lead to unrecovered allocations. A method of overloading the builtin new and delete functions is introduced that can ameliorate this problem. 1 Introduction This approach was originally implemented in half a day a number of years ago (at a company that no longer exists.) It has evolved and matured over the intervening years into something that is only mildly better than the original. A need locate memory leaks was identified in a long-running program (a highly optimizing, retargetable compiler [1].) This sense of a "leak" was dynamic memory being newed without being deleted. The executable size quickly outgrew the size of memory in the machine, requiring an undesirable amount of swapping activity. The program was written in C++ and was running on a UNIX machine. The first step to attacking the problem was to find where memory was being requested, used, and not returned. 2 Approach In C++, it is easy to overload the builtin new and delete operators wit...

Citations