Resource leak
A resource leak is the failure to release an acquired resource after it is no longer needed, leaving it occupied or unavailable for reuse.
100 C++ Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
A resource leak is a failure to release an acquired resource, leaving it allocated or unavailable for reuse.
- How it is used
- Uses resource leaks as a practical C++ correctness mistake involving exceptions, termination, ownership, and cleanup.
- How deep it goes
- Explains failure paths with code and cleanup traces, then stops short of redesigning legacy systems comprehensively.
- Examples
- Uses database connections, file-backed page text, dynamic grade arrays, and locally returned strings as failure examples.
- What you can do after
- Diagnose/debug with it by tracing ownership, destructor execution, exception paths, and cleanup responsibility.
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Functional Programming in Scala, Second Edition
A resource leak is failure to release an acquired resource, such as an open file handle, after it is no longer needed.
- How it is used
- Frames resource leaks as a practical failure mode in incremental file processing and a motivation for resource-safe abstractions.
- How deep it goes
- Explains normal and exceptional cleanup, then stops short of presenting a compiler-enforced resource-safety implementation.
- Examples
- Uses an imperative Scala file counter whose finally block closes the source after incremental iteration.
- What you can do after
- Diagnose leaks by identifying acquired resources whose cleanup is omitted or bypassed by exceptions.
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Kotlin in Action, 2E
A resource leak is the unintended retention or failure to release of resources such as threads, memory, or active concurrent tasks.
- How it is used
- Uses cancellation-safe cleanup and structured concurrency to prevent unreleased resources in concurrent Kotlin code.
- How deep it goes
- Explains the failure scenario and two cleanup mechanisms, but stops short of broader resource-management diagnostics.
- Examples
- Uses a cancellable DatabaseConnection coroutine, an explicit finally block, and the use function as contrasting cleanup examples.
- What you can do after
- Diagnose/debug with it by identifying cancellation paths and applying finally, use, or structured concurrency to guarantee cleanup.
Related concepts
- task cancellationaddressed by · Task cancellation is a request or mechanism for stopping an asynchronous or in-progress operation before it completes normally.
- deferaddressed by · Defer is a language feature that schedules an operation to execute when the surrounding function or scope exits, including during exceptional unwinding.
- resource cleanupaddressed by · Resource cleanup is the release of resources or restoration of state when an operation or scope ends or fails.
- resource acquisition is initializationaddressed by · Resource acquisition is initialization (RAII) is a resource-management pattern that ties resource ownership and release to the lifetime of an object or scope.
- copy assignment operatoraddressed by · A copy assignment operator is a C++ special member function that copies state from one object into an already existing object of a compatible type.
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