Question

Is there a way to identify at run-time of an executable is being run from within valgrind? I have a set of C++ unit tests, and one of them expects std::vector::reserve to throw std::bad_alloc. When I run this under valgrind, it bails out completely, preventing me from testing for both memory leaks (using valgrind) and behavior (expecting the exception to be thrown).

Here’s a minimal example that reproduces it:

#include <vector> int main() {     size_t uint_max = static_cast<size_t>(-1);     std::vector<char> v;     v.reserve(uint_max); } 

Running valgrind, I get this output:

Warning: silly arg (-1) to __builtin_new() new/new[] failed and should throw an exception, but Valgrind    cannot throw exceptions and so is aborting instead.  Sorry.    at 0x40192BC: VALGRIND_PRINTF_BACKTRACE (valgrind.h:319)    by 0x401C823: operator new(unsigned) (vg_replace_malloc.c:164)    by 0x80487BF: std::vector<char, std::allocator<char> >::reserve(unsigned) new_allocator.h:92)    by 0x804874D: main (vg.cxx:6) 

I’d like to modify my unit test to simply skip the offending code when it’s being run from within valgrind. Is this possible?

Answer 1

You should look at this page from the Valgrind manual, it contains a RUNNING_ON_VALGRIND macro (included from valgrind.h) which does what you want.