In
computer science, a
memory leak is a type of
resource leak that occurs when a
computer program incorrectly manages
memory allocations in such a way that memory which is no longer needed is not released. In
object-oriented programming, a memory leak may happen when an
object is stored in memory but cannot be accessed by the running code. A memory leak has symptoms similar to a number of other problems (see below) and generally can only be diagnosed by a programmer with access to the program's source code.