A memory leak, in computer science (or leakage, in this context), occurs when a computer program acquires memory but fails to release it back to the operating system. In object-oriented programming, a memory leak may happen when an object is stored in memory but cannot be accessed by the running code. A memory leak has symptoms similar to a number of other problems (see below) and generally can only be diagnosed by a programmer with access to the program source code.
Because they can exhaust available system memory as an application runs, memory leaks are often the cause of or a contributing factor to software aging.
Read more about Memory Leak: Consequences, Programming Issues, RAII, Reference Counting and Cyclic References, Effects, Other Memory Consumers, A Simple Example in C
Famous quotes containing the words memory and/or leak:
“You have to begin to lose your memory, if only in bits and pieces, to realize that memory is what makes our lives. Life without memory is no life at all, just as an intelligence without the possibility of expression is not really an intelligence. Our memory is our coherence, our reason, our feeling, even our action. Without it, we are nothing.”
—Luis Buñuel (1900–1983)
“The office ... make[s] its incumbent a repair man behind a dyke. No sooner is one leak plugged than it is necessary to dash over and stop another that has broken out. There is no end to it.”
—Herbert Hoover (1874–1964)