METHOD AND COMPUTER PROGRAMMING PRODUCT FOR DETECTING MEMORY LEAKS

• US 20080072007A1
• Filed: 06/20/2007
• Published: 03/20/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 06/22/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Dspace GmbH
• Original Assignee: Dspace Digital Signal Processing And Control Engineering Gmbh
• Inventors: Zagatta, Gunther
• Granted Patent: US 8,504,996 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 711/170
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3668 Software testing software testing in telephone exchanges H04M3/242, testing of hardware G06F11/22
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 12/023 Free address space management

Abstract

The invention relates to a method for detecting memory leaks produced by a program running on a computer, wherein during a program run, for each allocation of a memory region at least one information item concerning the performed allocation is entered in an allocation list and a check is made as to whether the allocation list contains a stored reference pattern of information that is typical for one or more memory leaks, and after a stored reference pattern is found the program run is paused, or a memory leak thus detected is associated with the region of the running program whose processing resulted in the most recent entry in the allocation list. The invention further relates to a computer programming product which carries out the method when the computer program is executed on a computer.

Claims

1. A method for detecting memory leaks produced by a program running on a computer, wherein

during a program run, for each allocation of a memory region at least one information item concerning the performed allocation is entered in an allocation list;

a check is made as to whether the allocation list contains a stored reference pattern of information that is typical for one or more memory leaks; and

upon finding a stored reference pattern the program run is paused, or a memory leak thus detected is associated with the region of the running program whose processing resulted in the most recent entry in the allocation list.

2. The method according to claim 1, wherein in order to create at least one reference pattern, a memory leak list is generated which after the program run contains information concerning all memory leaks originating during the program run, whereby the memory leak list or a file created therefrom is searched for information that is typical for memory leaks, and this information or data derived therefrom is stored as at least one pattern.

3. The method according to claim 1, wherein in order to create at least one reference pattern for at least two program runs one respective memory leak list is generated which after the particular program run includes information concerning all memory leaks originating in the particular program run, whereby the at least two memory leak lists or files produced therefrom are searched, at least in places, for matching information, and the information or data derived therefrom which matches at least in places is stored as at least one pattern wherein each contiguous region of matching information forms a pattern.

4. The method according to claim 3, wherein from each memory leak list, information concerning memory leaks created during a program run is written in a separate file, the respective files are searched for matching patterns, and the matching patterns form reference patterns which are stored.

5. The method according to claim 4, wherein a separate file contains information concerning the distance of a memory leak from a previous memory leak, and the length of a memory leak.

6. The method according to claim 3 wherein from the pattern search in the at least two memory leak lists or files produced therefrom a search is made for the occurrence of matching memory leak distances and lengths.

7. The method according to claim 6, wherein found agreements are discarded as a contribution to a pattern when the memory leak distance which is in agreement exceeds a limit value.

8. The method according to claim 1 wherein patterns in agreement which are found in a memory region of the computer on which the program is running are stored in a memory region of the registry, whereby only patterns containing more than one memory leak are stored.

9. The method according to claim 1 wherein a sequence of number pairs is stored as a reference pattern, each pair comprising a number which indicates the relative distance between two memory leaks, and a number which indicates the length of a memory leak.

10. The method according to claim 1 wherein while searching for a reference pattern in the allocation list a reference pattern list is formed in which the lengths of memory leaks together with their respective relative distances are entered, in particular with entries of zero provided therebetween.

11. The method according to claim 1 wherein the length of each allocated memory region is entered in an allocation list.

12. A program stored on a medium readable by a processor wherein during a program run, for each allocation of a memory region at least one information item concerning the performed allocation is entered in an allocation list;

a check is made as to whether the allocation list contains a stored reference pattern of information that is typical for one or more memory leaks; and

upon finding a stored reference pattern the program run is paused, or a memory leak thus detected is associated with the region of the running program whose processing resulted in the most recent entry in the allocation list.