Most C++ programmers agree that it can be harrowing trying to identify the memory leaks in a given program.

If you’re working on the GNU/Linux platform, there’s an interesting tool you can use to minimize the hassle of this task: mtrace.

Here’s some background on mtrace:

1. You call the mtrace() function to log all memory leaks. The memory allocations and deallocations are logged to a text file pointed to by the environment variable?MALLOC_TRACE.
2. A Perl utility called mtrace parses the text file logged by your program and identifies the memory leaks.

The following code allocates memory, but does not essentially free it:

#include int main() { 	int *a;	a = malloc(sizeof(int)); //Allocate memory		*a = 7;	//Notice that we are not freeing memory before we end the program. 		return EXIT_SUCCESS;}

Now, see how to use mtrace to identify the memory leak:

• Step 1: Setup MALLOC_TRACE environment variable to point to a file where mtrace needs to log the memory allocations:

        setenv MALLOC_TRACE  /home/karthik/temp/trace.txt 

• Step 2: Insert mtrace hooks into the program:

  #include #include  /* Header file to include mtrace related functions */int main() { 	int *a;	mtrace(); /* This starts memory tracing. This has to be done before we do a 'malloc' or we allocate memory.  */		a = malloc(sizeof(int));  /* Allocate memory */		*a = 7;	/* Notice that we are not freeing memory before we end the program.  */		return EXIT_SUCCESS;}

• Step 3: Compile the modified program with the debugging options turned on:

      $ gcc -g -Wall -ansi -pedantic leak.c

• Step 4: Run the program.
• Step 5: Use the mtrace utility to retrieve the information. Here’s what the syntax looks like:

  mtrace   [akkumar@empress work]$ mtrace a.out ~/temp/trace.txtMemory not freed:-----------------   Address     Size     Caller0x08049910      0x4  at /home/karthik/tips/leak.c:9

This precisely tells you that there is a potential memory leak at line 9:

  a = malloc(sizeof(int));  /* Allocate memory */ 

mtrace is a GNU utility.

The code in this tip was tested on a Linux platform with the gcc 3.2.3.