Documentation excerpt:
With Sun WorkShop Memory Monitor, you can program without calling free()
or delete. Determining when to call free() or delete is difficult.
Studies indicate that 30% to 40% of programmer time is spent on memory
management in C or C++ programs. Failing to release memory causes memory
leaks, which refers to the accumulation of unused memory in the program,
ultimately causing the program to monopolize or even run out of memory.
Releasing memory too early leaves loose pointers, which are pointers
that do not point to valid memory. Using loose pointers invariably
causes data corruption, segmentation faults, or general protection
violations. Sun WorkShop Memory Monitor automatically eliminates the
problems of freeing memory at the wrong time.
In the field, Sun WorkShop Memory Monitor automatically protects your
program against memory leaks and premature frees, even those in
third-party libraries. Simply linking with Sun WorkShop Memory Monitor
automatically eliminates any leaks. In deployment mode, Sun WorkShop
Memory Monitor's high-performance memory allocator makes your programs
run faster and consume less memory.
Sounds like nirvana ;-)
Shame it only works with the Sun compilers.
However, there is an explanation of how it works that might be useful
when considering how to do this for perl6. I've attached the HTML -
sorry about the broken links, but I don't think this is on any
externally-visible webpage.
Alan Burlison
