On Wed, Dec 11, 2024 at 6:01 PM Greg Wooledge <g...@wooledge.org> wrote: > > On Thu, Dec 12, 2024 at 05:17:46 +0800, Bret Busby wrote: > > Many years ago, I believe when I was being taught 'C' programming, we were > > taught to use two instructions named malloc and (I believe the other > > important corresponding instruction), dealloc, [...] > > The opposite of malloc() is free(). > > > and, some software, including > > some web browsers (and, the vile javascript) seem to disregard that > > instruction and its importance, which is kind of like running an internal > > combustion engine without a governor, or, parking a vehicle on a slope, > > without engaging the handbrake. > > These programs aren't written in C. Manual memory management is a dying > art. Most languages these days use automatic garbage collection, freeing > unused memory when nothing is using it any longer. > > This makes memory leaks less common, but when they *do* occur, they're > quite difficult to find. Usually it means you've accidentally retained > a reference to the object in question in some part of the program that > never goes away.
The thing that strikes me about the managed languages, like Java and .Net, are the number of memory leak tools you have to use to find the leaks that are supposed to be automatically handled for the programmer... Jeff
