From: К @rational.com (Kent Mitchell) Subject: Does memory leak? Date 1995/03/31 Cohen (nco.. [email protected]) wrote: The only programs I know of with deliberate memory leaks are those whose executio

From: К
@rational.com (Kent Mitchell)
Subject: Does memory leak?
Date
1995/03/31
Cohen (nco..
[email protected]) wrote:
The only programs I know of with deliberate memory leaks are those whose
executions are short enough, and whose target machines have enough
virtual memory space, that running out of memory is not a concern
(This class of programs includes many student programming exercises and
some simple applets and utilities; it includes few if any embedded or
safety-critical programs.
This sparked an interesting memory for me
I was once working with a
customer who was producing on-board software for a missile
In my analysis
of the code, I pointed out that they had a number of problems with storage
leaks
Imagine my surprise when the customers
chief software engineer said
Of course it leaks
He went on to point out
that they had calculated the
amount of memory the application would leak in
the total possible flight time
for the missile and then doubled that number
They added this much
the leaks
Since the missile
additional memory to the hardware to
support
will explode when it hits its target or at the
end of its flight, the
ultimate in garbage collection is performed without programmer intervention
Kent Mitchell
One possible reason that things aren't
Technical Consultant
going according to plan is
Rational Software Corporation
that there never *was* a plan!