If I programmed — without knowing it — a memory leak, and the application terminates, is the leaked memory freed?
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If I programmed — without knowing it — a memory leak, and the application terminates, is the leaked memory freed?
Yes, a “memory leak” is simply memory that a process no longer has a reference to, and thus can no longer free. The OS still keeps track of all the memory allocated to a process, and will free it when that process terminates.
In the vast majority of cases the OS will free the memory – as is the case with normal “flavors” of Windows, Linux, Solaris, etc. However it is important to note that in specialized environments such as various Real-Time Operating Systems the memory may not be freed when the program is terminated.