# V2588. MISRA. All memory or resources allocated dynamically should be explicitly released.

This diagnostic rule is based on the MISRA (Motor Industry Software Reliability Association) software development standard.

This rule applies only to C. The analyzer detected a potential memory or resource leak. The memory or resource had been allocated with standard library functions, such as: 'malloc', 'calloc', 'realloc', or 'fopen'.

For example:

    void foo()
    {
      int *a = (int*)malloc(40 * sizeof(int));
      int *b = (int*)malloc(80 * sizeof(int));
      ....
      free(a);
    }

The code above dynamically allocates two buffers, but when the function exits, only one of them is released. This creates a memory leak.

You can fix the code fragment in the following way:

    void foo()
    {
      int *a = (int*)malloc(40 * sizeof(int));
      int *b = (int*)malloc(80 * sizeof(int));
      ....
      free(a);
      free(b);
    }

Let's take a look at a different example:

    void bar(bool b)
    {
      FILE *f = fopen("tmp", "r");
      if (b)
      {
        return;
      }
      ....
      fclose(f);
    }

The function above opens and reads a file - and does not close it on one of the exit paths. This results in a file descriptor leak.

Below is the correct code:

    void bar(bool b)
    {
      FILE *f = fopen("tmp", "r");
      if (b)
      {
        fclose(f);
        return;
      }
      ....
      fclose(f);
    }

This diagnostic is classified as:

MISRA-C-2012-22.1 MISRA-C-2023-22.1