Do Small Memory Leaks Matter Anymore?

Question

With RAM typically in the Gigabytes on all PC\'s now, should I be spending time hunting down all the small (non-growing) memory leaks that may be in my program? I\'m talking abo

Answer 1

Leaks are bugs.

You probably have other bugs too.

When you ship a product, you ship it with known bugs. When you choose which (of the known) bugs to "fix" versus "ship with", you do so based on the cost and risk to fix versus the customer benefit.

Leaks are no different. If it's a small leak that happens during an infrequent operation in a non-server app (e.g. an app that runs for minutes or hours and then shuts down), it might be "ok" in the same way any other bug is ok.

Actually, leaks can be kinda different in one important way, which is that if you are shipping a library/API, you really should fix them, because the customer benefit is enormous (otherwise all your customer 'inherit' your leak, and will be phoning you just as you have to do to talk to 3rd party vendor now).