Navigation Random Term essentials n. Things necessary to maintain a productive and secure
hacking environment. "A jug of wine, a loaf of bread, a
20-megahertz 80386 box... VIEW ENTIRE DEFINITION
View Definition: memory leak
memory leak n. An error in a program's dynamic-store allocation
logic that causes it to fail to reclaim discarded memory, leading
to eventual collapse due to memory exhaustion. Also (esp. at
CMU) called
core leak . These problems were severe on older
machines with small, fixed-size address spaces, and special "leak
detection" tools were commonly written to root them out. With the
advent of virtual memory, it is unfortunately easier to be sloppy
about wasting a bit of memory (although when you run out of memory
on a VM machine, it means you've got a *real* leak!). See
aliasing bug ,
fandango on core ,
smash the stack ,
precedence lossage ,
overrun screw ,
leaky heap ,
leak .
