Home/ Questions/Q 67477
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-05-10T19:15:58+00:00

I’ve just started experimenting with SDL in C++, and I thought checking for memory

  • 0

I’ve just started experimenting with SDL in C++, and I thought checking for memory leaks regularly may be a good habit to form early on.

With this in mind, I’ve been running my ‘Hello world’ programs through Valgrind to catch any leaks, and although I’ve removed everything except the most basic SDL_Init() and SDL_Quit() statements, Valgrind still reports 120 bytes lost and 77k still reachable.

My question is: Is there an acceptable limit for memory leaks, or should I strive to make all my code completely leak-free?

Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. Be careful that Valgrind isn’t picking up false positives in its measurements.

    Many naive implementations of memory analyzers flag lost memory as a leak when it isn’t really.

    Maybe have a read of some of the papers in the external links section of the Wikipedia article on Purify. I know that the documentation that comes with Purify describes several scenarios where you get false positives when trying to detect memory leaks and then goes on to describe the techniques Purify uses to get around the issues.

    BTW I’m not affiliated with IBM in any way. I’ve just used Purify extensively and will vouch for its effectiveness.

    Edit: Here’s an excellent introductory article covering memory monitoring. It’s Purify specific but the discussion on types of memory errors is very interesting.

    HTH.

    cheers,

    Rob

    • 0