what is a memory leak

[Anand S R]

I am preparing for the labview certification exam. One of the topics is memory leak. Since labview handles all the memory, how can a memory leak happen?

[a]

"SRA" wrote in message
news:50650000000800000099660000-1031838699000@exchange.ni.com...
> I am preparing for the labview certification exam. One of the topics
> is memory leak. Since labview handles all the memory, how can a memory
> leak happen?

The fact that you have to ask this question indicates you are not quite
ready for an exam like that.

A quick search on google yeilded the following resut,
http://searchwin2000.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid1_gci213633,00.html

"A memory leak is the gradual loss of available computer memory when a
program (an application or part of the operating system) repeatedly fails to
return memory that it has obtained for temporary use. As a result, the
available memory for that application or that part of the operating syste
m
becomes exhausted and the program can no longer function. For a program that
is frequently opened or called or that runs continuously, even a very small
memory leak can eventually cause the program or the system to terminate. A
memory leak is the result of a program bug"

Anytime you dynamically allocate memory you risk a memory leak. In Labview
you can open references to vi's or controls and not close them and you can
cause a memory leak You can also insert elements into an array and cause a
memory leak. Typically a memory leak becomes obvious when the offending
routine is called recursively.