Does Visual C++ debug build identify heap corruption errors?

I have been struggling to detect a memory corruption error in our product. The memory detection tools like valgrind only tell the problem at the time of the crash, not when the corruption actually occurs. I have seen while using debug builds that it will check the memory area before and after the block being freed, and show a debug assertion failure saying a heap corruption has occured. So can I rebuild my product in debug mode to capture the error right when it occurs? Will it also catch buffer overruns etc? I could not find any information on the internet about debug builds being targetted towards memory error detection.


You can use as well the 'Page Heap' available on every version of Windows. You can use gflags that comes along to Debugging Tools for Windows to configure Full Page Heap for your application. You can then run your application, even in retail mode, under the debugger. The debugger will stop once you encounter a buffer overrun or access to freed memory.

I like very much this tool, because it is built in the OS, an can even be activated on a customer site (gflags only sets registry keys and you can simply send these keys to your customer).

Some people are afraid when we mention (Debugging Tools for Windows). You can use Visual Studio to diagnose the problem. The only thing you need are the PDBs corresponding to your binaries (you can generate them even for release builds).


I am not sure about the debug builds, but for a nice overview of memory corruption tools you might look at http://code.google.com/p/address-sanitizer/wiki/ComparisonOfMemoryTools. It list Valgrind and what it should be able to check for you.


"C++" is not a compiler; vendors make their own according (more or less) to the standard specs.

I only have experience with Microsoft's, and I can tell you that it checks heap corruption by allocating "sentries" around each new or malloc block (in debug mode only, of course) and filling them with a special pattern (was 0xCD when I last used it), and then it checks the guards for every write around that location. If they changed, you'll get a run-time error saying the heap got corrupted.

By the way, buffer overflows are heap corruption.

Edit to add a reference: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/8wtf2dfz.aspx

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