Debug new

Debug_new refers to a technique in C++ to overload and/or redefine operator new and operator delete in order to intercept the memory allocation and deallocation calls, and thus debug a program for memory usage. It often involves defining a macro named DEBUG_NEW, and makes new become something like new(__FILE__, __LINE__) to record the file/line information on allocation. Microsoft Visual C++ uses this technique in its Microsoft Foundation Classes. There are some ways to extend this method to avoid using macro redefinition while still able to display the file/line information on some platforms.

There are many inherent limitations to this method. It applies only to C++, and cannot catch memory leaks by C functions like malloc. However, it can be very simple to use and also very fast, when compared to some more complete memory debugger solutions.

ee also

*Memory debugger

External links

* [http://wyw.dcweb.cn/leakage.htm A Cross-Platform Memory Leak Detector]
* [http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/tz7sxz99(VS.80).aspx DEBUG_NEW (MFC)]