<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"> <HTML ><HEAD ><TITLE >Why does GTK+/GLib leak memory?</TITLE ><META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="Modular DocBook HTML Stylesheet Version 1.79"><LINK REL="HOME" TITLE="GTK+ FAQ" HREF="book1.html"><LINK REL="UP" TITLE="Development with GTK+: general questions" HREF="c466.html"><LINK REL="PREVIOUS" TITLE="How do I do drag-and-drop?" HREF="x687.html"><LINK REL="NEXT" TITLE="Development with GTK+: widget specific questions" HREF="c698.html"></HEAD ><BODY CLASS="SECT1" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#000000" LINK="#0000FF" VLINK="#840084" ALINK="#0000FF" ><DIV CLASS="NAVHEADER" ><TABLE SUMMARY="Header navigation table" WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" ><TR ><TH COLSPAN="3" ALIGN="center" >GTK+ FAQ</TH ></TR ><TR ><TD WIDTH="10%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="bottom" ><A HREF="x687.html" ACCESSKEY="P" ><<< Previous</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="80%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="bottom" >Development with GTK+: general questions</TD ><TD WIDTH="10%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="bottom" ><A HREF="c698.html" ACCESSKEY="N" >Next >>></A ></TD ></TR ></TABLE ><HR ALIGN="LEFT" WIDTH="100%"></DIV ><DIV CLASS="SECT1" ><H1 CLASS="SECT1" ><A NAME="AEN693" >Why does GTK+/GLib leak memory?</A ></H1 ><P >It doesn't. Both GLib and the C library (malloc implementation) will cache allocated memory on occasion, even if you free it with free().</P ><P >So you can't generally use tools such as top to see if you are using free() properly (aside from the very roughest of estimations, i.e. if you are really, really screwing up top will show that, but you can't distinguish small mistakes from the GLib/malloc caches).</P ><P >In order to find memory leaks, use proper memory profiling tools.</P ></DIV ><DIV CLASS="NAVFOOTER" ><HR ALIGN="LEFT" WIDTH="100%"><TABLE SUMMARY="Footer navigation table" WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" ><TR ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="x687.html" ACCESSKEY="P" ><<< Previous</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="34%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="book1.html" ACCESSKEY="H" >Home</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="c698.html" ACCESSKEY="N" >Next >>></A ></TD ></TR ><TR ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" >How do I do drag-and-drop?</TD ><TD WIDTH="34%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="c466.html" ACCESSKEY="U" >Up</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" >Development with GTK+: widget specific questions</TD ></TR ></TABLE ></DIV ></BODY ></HTML >