Editing Memory leak (section)

{{Short description|When a computer program fails to release unnecessary memory}}
{{More footnotes|date=September 2007}}
{{Program execution}}

In [[computer science]], a '''memory leak''' is a type of [[resource leak]] that occurs when a [[computer program]] incorrectly manages [[memory allocation]]s<ref>{{cite web|last=Crockford|first=Douglas|title=JScript Memory Leaks|url=https://javascript.crockford.com/memory/leak.html|access-date=20 July 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121207132137/http://javascript.crockford.com/memory/leak.html|archive-date=7 December 2012|url-status=live}}</ref> in a way that [[Computer memory|memory]] which is no longer needed is not released. A memory leak may also happen when an [[object (computer science)|object]] is stored in memory but cannot be accessed by the running code (i.e. [[unreachable memory]]).<ref>{{cite web|url=https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6470651/creating-a-memory-leak-with-java |title=Creating a memory leak with Java |publisher=Stack Overflow |access-date=2013-06-14}}</ref> A memory leak has symptoms similar to a number of other problems and generally can only be diagnosed by a [[programmer]] with access to the program's source code.

A related concept is the "space leak", which is when a program consumes excessive memory but does eventually release it.<ref>{{cite web|title=Leaking Space|last=Mitchell|first=Neil|url=https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2538488|access-date=27 May 2017}}</ref>

Because they can exhaust available system memory as an application runs, memory leaks are often the cause of or a contributing factor to [[software aging]].