Question

I have a C function that is called thousands of times and I have noticed that it is the only possible place for a memory leak. I have used Valgrind and Totalview’s MemoryScape to check for leaks but they say nothing, yet when the application runs on AIX 6.1 there is a gradual leak.

NOTE: I am using a “leak free” SAP RFC SDK for this, and have spoken to the develops and they say the lib I am using is 100% leak free…so it is not that…

The code is roughly like follows, and is called thousands of times each hour….

int writeMessage(message msg){
...
...
header = ItCreate( "HEADER", HEADER_LEN, 0, 0 );
body = ItCreate( "DATA", DATA_LEN, 0, 0 );
...
...
ItDelete(it_header);
ItDelete(it_body);
...
}

Could those string literals like “HEADER” and “DATA” be causing my small leak? Stupid question but I would rather ask to be safe.

What would be the difference if I declared them as CONSTANTS in this specific case?

Thanks for the help, much appreciated

Answer 1

A string literal itself does not allocate or free memory, and therefore cannot leak.

Declaring them const won’t change anything. Your problem is elsewhere.