Question

why i’m getting the memory leak errors without allocating or adding any elements to list below. should i just ignore it?

#define CRTDBG_MAP_ALLOC
#include <crtdbg.h>
#include <list>
using std::list;

int main()
{
    list <char*> roots;

    _CrtDumpMemoryLeaks();
}

Answer 1

You are not giving the roots variable a chance to be destroyed before checking for memory leaks. If roots is destroyed first, you should notice that everything is cleaned up. Try this instead.

#define CRTDBG_MAP_ALLOC
#include <crtdbg.h>
#include <list>
using std::list;

int main()
{
    {
        list <char*> roots;
    }

    _CrtDumpMemoryLeaks();
}