Question

When I exit my C++ program it crashes with errors like:

EAccessViolation with mesage 'Access violation at address 0...

and

Abnormal Program Termination

It is probably caused by some destructor because it happens only when the application exits. I use a few external libraries and cannot find the code that causes it. Is there a function that forces immediate program exit (something like kill in Linux) so that memory would have to be freed by the operating system? I could use this function in app exit event.

I know that it would be a terrible solution because it’d just hide the problem.

I’m just asking out of sheer curiosity, so please don’t give me -1 🙂

I tried exit(0) from stdlib but it didn’t help.

EDIT:

Thanks for your numerous replies:)
I use Builder C++ 6 (I know it’s outdated but for some reasons I had to use it). My app uses library to neural networks (FANN). Using the debugger I found that program crashes in:

~neural_net()
{
    destroy();
}

destroy() calls multiple time another function fann_safe_free(ptr), that is:

#define fann_safe_free(x) {if(x) { free(x); x = NULL; }}

The library works great, problem only appears when it does cleaning. That’s why I asked about so brutal solution. My app is multi-threaded but other threads operate on different data.

I will analyze my code for the n-th time(the bug must be somewhere), thanks for all your tips 🙂

Answer 1

You should fix the problem.

• First step: find at check all functions you register with atexit() (not many I hope)
• Second step: find all global variables and check their destructors.
• Third Step: find all static function variables check their destructors.

But otherwise you can abort.
Note: abort is for Abnormal program termination.

abort()

The difference: (note letting an application leave the main function is the equivalent of exit())

• exit()

  1. Call the functions registered with the atexit(3) function, in the reverse order of their registration. This includes the destruction of all global (static storage duration) variables.
  2. Flush all open output streams.
  3. Close all open streams.
  4. Unlink all files created with the tmpfile(3) function.

• abort()

  1. Flush all open output streams.
  2. Close all open streams.