Re: memory leaks? (C++, twice in the same day...

[cr...@goingware.com]

irving says:

>   char *foo = str.transcode();

transcode() allocates space for the char* using new[]; the caller is
responsible for delete[]ing it.

This isn't clearly documented; the description of transcode() says that
it returns a copy of the string, but it doesn't explicitly say that the
caller must delete[].

---

That's not my memory leak.  Spotlight will give you a stack trace with the 
function name, source file name and line at each point in the stack trace.

The place in my code where the memory that leaks is fetched is:

DOMString str = el.getAttribute( attributeName );

the actual place where the memory is allocated with new is in a call to 
cloneStringHandle somewhere in the DOMString implementation.

I think I do have another leak as you describe, come to think of it.  I had 
thought that the caller I passed it to would dispose of it, but it doesn't since 
that caller can also take static strings.

It happens that I have a huge number of memory leaks in my code.  The text 
file giving the stack traces is about 400k.  I've actually been fairly careful to 
delete memory as best I could - to have that many leaks is pretty suprising.

It happens that both the Xerces library and the GUI library I'm using use 
reference counted things (with different implementations of a reference counter 
- it's hidden in Xerces).  That's a nice idea if it's used right but I have the 
impression that making a small mistake with forgetting to delete something 
can leave a whole forest of objects in memory referring to each other.

Mike
crawford@goingware.com
http://www.goingware.com
Michael D. Crawford
GoingWare - Expert Software Development and Consulting
http://www.goingware.com
crawford@goingware.com

     Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow