Just kinda curious. Be totally honest here with a short simple answer w/o looking it up.
What do you think a memory leak is?
I'm just kind of curious  what the average gamer thinks a memory leak is, with as much as it's thrown around. I know MMORPG.com isn't the average gamer, but still.
If you're a programmer. Please sit back and observe the replies. Don't flame anyone, don't make fun of anyone. Personally, if you named a piece of a gas engine I couldn't tell you what it is or what it's for. lol. I still love cars and driving though!
 
Edit:
Good replies a couple ppl were pretty close.

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Originally posted by relived
It's when a program assigns data to the RAM but the program doesn't completely clear the data when it's done so the RAM 'fills up'. It's not always a problem, but it can cause conflicts with other programs trying to use the RAM...anything from slowdowns to BSOD.

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^This is right tho
 
Let me explain a Memory Leak:

Think of Memory (RAM) as a box of Crayons in a Kindergarten class. The same box is passed around to all the kids in the class, but sometimes a kid doesn't put back his or her Crayon and after awhile you end up with an empty box, then the teacher gets mad and crushes the box and throws it away.  Simply put, anyway.
 
A Memory Leak is pretty much what it says, it's a Memory Leak. A program allocates memory when it's created and can dynamically allocate more memory while it's running. In some languages, a programmer is tasked with the job of deallocating that memory back to the system. A memory leak occurs when the programmer doesn't do this, or doesn't do it properly. It's actually a very common bug in alot of progams and almost any large program done in a language where this is possible has a memory leak.
Some aren't as bad as others. It could be anything from a couple bytes in a couple hours, or it could be an exponential growth in the worst of cases. An easy way to identify a Memory Leak is have a program running for several hours and track it's memory usage. If that memory usage is much larger than it was in the beginning, then you probably have a memory leak somewhere. That's not always the case, but you get the idea. Too much and you can have a BSOD and complete system shut down.

So... if you have a program that crashes or you lose items or anything like that. It's probably NOT a memory leak. A Memory Leak would be the game slowing down considerably after long periods of play.

some kinda of over use of video memory or something that exerts the ram to use more memory then it needs causing your computer to potentially lag and slow down its processing????

I'll give an example instead of explaining, im doing some quests in a game and finally got my epic laser shooting sword and log out to finally get some air and the next morning i wake up and log in just to find it "poof" into thin air. Put into a definition i guess the game not saving your character/accounts data thus loosing stuff and progress.

A memory leak is when a program consumes memory in the course of completely a task, but then never releases the memory after the task is complete. The memory is still consumed but is not in use in any way. Firefox seems to do this on my XP computer. The longer it's open, the more ram is consumed. The increase in ram does not correspond with Firefox's use of ram as reported by the task manager, and closing Firefox does not release the ram. Yet, after extensive testing, this only occurs when Firefox is open. Leaving tabs open with script heavy pages seems to make it worse.

It should be noted that a memory leak does not imply a loss of data.

It's when a program assigns data to the RAM but the program doesn't completely clear the data when it's done so the RAM 'fills up'.  It's not always a problem,  but it can cause conflicts with other programs trying to use the RAM...anything from slowdowns to BSOD.

Oh sure I know this one. Memory leak is when you zone to a town and you can't remember what the heck you went there for. It's a literal thing and sometimes you find a spot on the couch and your pants are wet, it usually happens when you don't take enough bio breaks.

Hence the leak or in 1337 speak , OMFG I juz mem0ry |33kD - you see that everywhere in oocHardcore - the secret chan that connects if you stay logged in over 14 hours. The l33k reference is to the spinning leeks chick cause hardcore folks spell wrong for dbl meaning.

Here she is if you are too wrapped up in pvp vids to know miss leeky .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mdMb6bRXt4

Memory Leak -   When your computer has to go to the bathroom.

 A memory leak is the entropy of a computer's processing ability while it's trying to divide by zero when running programs.

Well you know how a computer can catch a virus right? That’s like a cold but for computers, so don’t sneeze on them.

A memory leak is like Altizmers, the computer has trouble remembering if it closed the door (programme) and locked it before it went out. Just like in real life you can send your PC to a retirement home if this gets too bad.

Feeding your PC a Macintosh a day keeps memory leaks at bay . So I recommend you do just that.

Dr Scot

I'll freely admit to being fairly inept in matters of hardware/software .. I'm a gamer, not a techie.

I seem to recall someone once telling me that a memory leak is when a program snaffles up some memory and stores something in it, but never releases the memory once it's done with it.

Like, you write a program to store your telephone number in memory and call you at 9pm then shut down .. the program does its thing but doesn't delete your telephone number out of the memory so it stays there until the memory is completely cleared by a reboot or something.

memory leaks are when my brain turns to mush and starts coming out of my ears.

Originally posted by TheHatter

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If you're a programmer. Please sit back and observe the replies. Don't flame anyone, don't make fun of anyone. Personally, if you named a piece of a gas engine I couldn't tell you what it is or what it's for. lol. I still love cars and driving though!

I don't understand why you did this.  You can have a more general chaos If you ask people what  is "friend" and what is "love", since the definitions of these things varies from person to person.  Asking a general tech thing, and getting innacurate repllies, a ocassional correct one, and a few misguided don't seems fun to me. :-/

A memory leak to me is when a program, or rather a piece of code in the program allocates memory endlessly unintended.

a: PUT 1kb OF trash INTO FASTRAM
GOTO a

The error being it should have been GOTO A (not a).

i've never looked it up and i haven't read replies above mine, so let's see if i embarrass myself here. i would guess a memory leak is a programming inefficiency which fails to dump or reset collected data that is no longer needed and instead it just keeps compounding and over time will create a big drain on the system's resources. okay. now i'll open my eyes and see if i'm going to get smacked in the head. lol.

Leak to me is stepping outside and whizzing downwind.

Jihad works both ways

Originally posted by Teiman

Originally posted by TheHatter

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If you're a programmer. Please sit back and observe the replies. Don't flame anyone, don't make fun of anyone. Personally, if you named a piece of a gas engine I couldn't tell you what it is or what it's for. lol. I still love cars and driving though!

I don't understand why you did this.  You can have a more general chaos If you ask people what  is "friend" and what is "love", since the definitions of these things varies from person to person.  Asking a general tech thing, and getting innacurate repllies, a ocassional correct one, and a few misguided don't seems fun to me. :-/

 

 

You're way off base. I was just wondering what people thought a Memory Leak is because it's used quite a bit. Friend or Love can't really be defined, where as a Memory Leak may be as hard to track down as finding a good friend or your true love, the definition behind it is concrete.

Updating the Main Post btw

 hurray floating pointers!

Originally posted by TheHatter

... other ppls stuff

You're way off base. I was just wondering what people thought a Memory Leak is because it's used quite a bit. Friend or Love can't really be defined, where as a Memory Leak may be as hard to track down as finding a good friend or your true love, the definition behind it is concrete.

 

Updating the Main Post btw

 

I think you are going to find plenty of ppl that don't understand words they use freely.

Have you ever heard someone say they got their account "hacked" when THEY installed a keylogger trying to cheat the game with a mod or THEY gave out their password to a buddy and the buddy logged in and did something they don't like?

Neither of those are actual hacking or what would be cracking but they call it that.

Program doesn't work, your computer too shabby, confused because wow ran perfectly but something 3 yrs newer stutters? Blame it on a memory leak because you saw someone else mention it in another game, you don't really have to understand it to say or type it.

With the amount of ppl that can't even figure out the difference in |your you're| and |there and their| in the mmos I see and even forums like these, it's not hard to fathom that they might throw around terms that they don't understand. I don't think you can even trust any answer you get with google under the fingers, anyone that wanted to could look up the term and reword it but if they did I suppose you taught them to stop using words they don't understand w/out researching just a tad bit :P