What (who) is memory leak - definition

TYPE OF RESOURCE LEAK THAT OCCURS WHEN A COMPUTER PROGRAM INCORRECTLY MANAGES MEMORY ALLOCATIONS

Memory Leak; Memory leaks; Storage leak; Leakage (computer science); Memleak; Space leak

memory leak

<programming> A leak in a program's dynamic store allocation logic that causes it to fail to reclaim memory in the heap after it has finished using it, eventually causing the program to fail due to lack of memory. These problems were severe on older machines with small, fixed-size address spaces, and special "leak detection" tools were written to diagnose them. The introduction of virtual memory made memory leaks a less serious problem, although if you run out of {virtual memory}, it means you've got a *real* leak! See aliasing bug. [Jargon File] (2003-10-07)

Memory leak

In computer science, a memory leak is a type of resource leak that occurs when a computer program incorrectly manages memory allocations in a way that memory which is no longer needed is not released. A memory leak may also happen when an object is stored in memory but cannot be accessed by the running code.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_leak

space leak

A data structure which grows bigger, or lives longer, than might be expected. Such unexpected memory use can cause a program to require more garbage collections or to run out of heap. Space leaks in functional programs usually result from excessive laziness. For example, the Haskell function sum [] = 0 sum (x:xs) = x + sum xs when applied to a list will build a chain of closures for the additions and only when it reaches the end of the list will it perform the additions and free the storage. Another example is the function mean l = sum l / length l The sum function forces the entire list l to be evaluated and built in the heap. None of it can be garbage collected until the length function has consumed it.

Wikipedia

Memory leak

In computer science, a memory leak is a type of resource leak that occurs when a computer program incorrectly manages memory allocations in a way that memory which is no longer needed is not released. A memory leak may also happen when an object is stored in memory but cannot be accessed by the running code (i.e. unreachable memory). A memory leak has symptoms similar to a number of other problems and generally can only be diagnosed by a programmer with access to the program's source code.

A related concept is the "space leak", which is when a program consumes excessive memory but does eventually release it.

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory leak

Examples of use of memory leak

1. But it also left Republicans with an institutional memory leak.