Question

Unfortunately the solutions have not worked yet; setting result.values pointer to 0 doesn’t actually relieve the memory usage. I’ve also tried free(result.values) in place of that, but that is not desired as that deletes my string.

Edit 2: I’ll try writing a stack destructor.

Edit 3: Gotcha. Thanks DeadMG, writing a destructor that free(values) did the trick perfectly! Wow… so simple.

In my Unicode library for C++, the ustring class has operator= functions set for char* values and other ustring values. When doing the simple memory leak test:

#include <cstdio>
#include "ucpp"
main() {
  ustring a;
  for(;;)a="MEMORY";
}

the memory used by the program grows uncontrollably (characteristic of a program with a big memory leak) even though I’ve added free() calls to both of the functions. I am unsure why this is ineffective (am I missing free() calls in other places?)

This is the current library code:

#include <cstdlib>
#include <cstring>
class ustring {
  int * values;
  long len;
  public:
  long length() {
    return len;
  }
  ustring() {
    len = 0;
    values = (int *) malloc(0);
  }
  ustring(const ustring &input) {
    len = input.len;
    values = (int *) malloc(sizeof(int) * len);
    for (long i = 0; i < len; i++)
      values[i] = input.values[i];
  }
  ustring operator=(ustring input) {
    ustring result(input);
    free(values);
    len = input.len;
    values = input.values;
    return * this;
  }
  ustring(const char * input) {
    values = (int *) malloc(0);
    long s = 0;                                                                 // s = number of parsed chars
    int a, b, c, d, contNeed = 0, cont = 0;
    for (long i = 0; input[i]; i++)
      if (input[i] < 0x80) {                                                    // ASCII, direct copy (00-7f)
        values = (int *) realloc(values, sizeof(int) * ++s);
        values[s - 1] = input[i];
      } else if (input[i] < 0xc0) {                                             // this is a continuation (80-bf)
        if (cont == contNeed) {                                                 // no need for continuation, use U+fffd
          values = (int *) realloc(values, sizeof(int) * ++s);
          values[s - 1] = 0xfffd;
        }
        cont = cont + 1;
        values[s - 1] = values[s - 1] | ((input[i] & 0x3f) << ((contNeed - cont) * 6));
        if (cont == contNeed) cont = contNeed = 0;
      } else if (input[i] < 0xc2) {                                             // invalid byte, use U+fffd (c0-c1)
        values = (int *) realloc(values, sizeof(int) * ++s);
        values[s - 1] = 0xfffd;
      } else if (input[i] < 0xe0) {                                             // start of 2-byte sequence (c2-df)
        contNeed = 1;
        values = (int *) realloc(values, sizeof(int) * ++s);
        values[s - 1] = (input[i] & 0x1f) << 6;
      } else if (input[i] < 0xf0) {                                             // start of 3-byte sequence (e0-ef)
        contNeed = 2;
        values = (int *) realloc(values, sizeof(int) * ++s);
        values[s - 1] = (input[i] & 0x0f) << 12;
      } else if (input[i] < 0xf5) {                                             // start of 4-byte sequence (f0-f4)
        contNeed = 3;
        values = (int *) realloc(values, sizeof(int) * ++s);
        values[s - 1] = (input[i] & 0x07) << 18;
      } else {                                                                  // restricted or invalid (f5-ff)
        values = (int *) realloc(values, sizeof(int) * ++s);
        values[s - 1] = 0xfffd;
      }
    len = s;
  }
  ustring operator=(const char * input) {
    ustring result(input);
    free(values);
    len = result.len;
    values = result.values;
    return * this;
  }
  ustring operator+(ustring input) {
    ustring result;
    result.len = len + input.len;
    result.values = (int *) malloc(sizeof(int) * result.len);
    for (long i = 0; i < len; i++)
      result.values[i] = values[i];
    for (long i = 0; i < input.len; i++)
      result.values[i + len] = input.values[i];
    return result;
  }
  ustring operator[](long index) {
    ustring result;
    result.len = 1;
    result.values = (int *) malloc(sizeof(int));
    result.values[0] = values[index];
    return result;
  }
  operator char * () {
    return this -> encode();
  }
  char * encode() {
    char * r = (char *) malloc(0);
    long s = 0;
    for (long i = 0; i < len; i++) {
      if (values[i] < 0x80)
        r = (char *) realloc(r, s + 1),
        r[s + 0] = char(values[i]),
        s += 1;
      else if (values[i] < 0x800)
        r = (char *) realloc(r, s + 2),
        r[s + 0] = char(values[i] >> 6 | 0x60),
        r[s + 1] = char(values[i] & 0x3f | 0x80),
        s += 2;
      else if (values[i] < 0x10000)
        r = (char *) realloc(r, s + 3),
        r[s + 0] = char(values[i] >> 12 | 0xe0),
        r[s + 1] = char(values[i] >> 6 & 0x3f | 0x80),
        r[s + 2] = char(values[i] & 0x3f | 0x80),
        s += 3;
      else
        r = (char *) realloc(r, s + 4),
        r[s + 0] = char(values[i] >> 18 | 0xf0),
        r[s + 1] = char(values[i] >> 12 & 0x3f | 0x80),
        r[s + 2] = char(values[i] >> 6 & 0x3f | 0x80),
        r[s + 3] = char(values[i] & 0x3f | 0x80),
        s += 4;
    }
    return r;
  }
};

Answer 1

Basically, you create far too many ustrings, you need a LOT more references, and you didn’t implement a destructor so when they all fall off the stack, they don’t get freed.

Also, when in your assignment operator, you need to set result.values to NULL, else the memory will be deleted. You could use a move operator to make this a nice fast operation, although I still don’t understand why you would.