Michael G Schwern <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > To catch memory mistakes in C, I'd normally use something like Electric > Fence or other malloc replacement. Basically something that replaces the > memory allocation functions with those that put in magic so that if your > program walks outside its allocated memory space it immediately pukes.
Recently, I searched the Web for the best C/C++ memory checking tools. After finding an awful lot of crappy ones, I finally stumbled on mpatrol, which I like a lot: it is powerful, mature, portable, works with both C and C++, nice licensing, good quality code and documentation, ... However, there is quite a long learning curve and you may need to recompile for best results. The other standout tool I noticed is valgrind (Linux only, I think): it's powerful and very easy to use (not requiring recompilation or relinking). It is a pest though if you want to check setuid executables and it won't find all memory errors (overwriting a stack array, for instance) -- but it does find a lot and is really convenient to use. If anyone knows of other good memory checking tools, please let me know. /-\ http://greetings.yahoo.com.au - Yahoo! Greetings Send your love online with Yahoo! Greetings - FREE!
