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Home/ Questions/Q 6174993
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Editorial Team
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Editorial Team
Asked: May 23, 20262026-05-23T23:50:53+00:00 2026-05-23T23:50:53+00:00

class MyClass { // empty class with no base class }; int main() {

  • 0
class MyClass
{
    // empty class with no base class
};

int main()
{
    MyClass* myClass = new MyClass();

    return 0;
}

Is this a memory leak?

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  1. Editorial Team
    Editorial Team
    2026-05-23T23:50:53+00:00Added an answer on May 23, 2026 at 11:50 pm

    Yes. Even though your class is empty, you still leak memory. There are a few reasons for this:

    • Allocations are never zero-length. Your OS doesn’t hand back a buffer of zero bytes. There is a minimum allocation size, and this is the size you’ll get if you allocate a zero-byte structure. (On my machine, it’s 16 bytes.)
    • Even if zero-length allocations existed, objects are systematically at least 1 byte large (where the size of a byte is the same as the size of a char).
    • Even if you did get a zero-length allocation, your OS has to keep track of this allocation. To do so, it uses a few more bytes to map the address to its allocation details. This has a constant size memory overhead that you get every time you allocate memory.

    So, your code leaks at least one byte of memory, plus the allocation details, even if your struct is empty.

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