Re: Suggestions for C malloc debugging tool

Debugging tools have some limitations that you may consider unfixable.


1. They can only find bugs they can't fix them.
2. They can only find bugs that occur in your tests.
3. They can only find bugs where they have access to source.
4. They don't do anything to improve the encapsulation of
      your code.


If you could attach a garbage collector to your code you could
eliminate all invocations of free and delete. Your leaks would be
fixed at the customer's site not just in your test code; the same goes
for premature frees. Leaks and premature frees in code you have no
access to would go too. Without frees users of your classes and
functions wouldn't have to know about how they used malloc or
new. This would improve your coding style and the reuseability of your
code.


Hans Boehm has a free garbage collector. Get on gclist (by
subscribing via majordomo@iecc.com) for more information. Send a
message with "subscribe gclist" and you can talk to the experts on the
subject. The docs are poor and you'll need a couple weeks to get it up
but its essentially very good.


Geodesic Systems sales@geodesic.com has a professional looking product.


There are limits to garbage collection in a language like C that
doesn't want to support it but you will find performance isn't one of
them.
--

Return to the comp.compilers page.
Search the comp.compilers archives again.