Causing a trace and giving results

A program can cause a trace to be performed and memory leaks to be reported by calling the malloc_dump_unreferenced() function provided by the library:

int malloc_dump_unreferenced ( int fd, 
                               int detail );

Suspend all threads, clear the mark information for all heap buffers, perform the trace operation, and print a report of all memory leaks detected. All items are reported in memory order.

fd
The file descriptor on which the report should be produced.
detail
How the trace operation should deal with any heap corruption problems it encounters:
1
Any problems encountered can be treated as fatal errors. After the error encountered is printed, abort the program. No report is produced.
0
Print case errors, and a report based on whatever heap information is recoverable.

Related links

  • Memory leaks

    The ability of the malloc library to keep full allocation chains of all the heap memory allocated by the program — as opposed to just accounting for some heap buffers — allows heap memory leaks to be detected by the library in response to requests by the program. Leaks can be detected in the program by performing tracing on the entire heap. This is described in the sections that follow.