Memory Debugging with Valgrind

Valgrind detects memory leaks, invalid reads/writes, and use‑after‑free.

Typical usage:

valgrind --leak-check=full ./myprog arg1 arg2

Output includes:

• Invalid read/write – address out of bounds.
• Leak summary – bytes lost, reachable, still reachable.
• Suppression files – ignore known false positives.

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📚 Example: Leak Detection

int main(void) {
    int *p = malloc(10 * sizeof *p);
    p[0] = 42; // good
    // forgot free(p);
    return 0;
}

Running Valgrind will report a definitely lost block of 40 bytes.

🎯 Best Practices

• Compile with -g to get meaningful line numbers.
• Run under Valgrind regularly during development.
• Combine with --track-origins=yes to pinpoint uninitialised values.