running valgrind

Question

I have not used valgrind before, but I need to use it to check memory leak. I ran the following command:

G_SLICE=always-malloc G_DEBUG=gc-friendly  valgrind -v --tool=memcheck --leak-check=full --num-callers=40 --log-file=valgrind.log example1
valgrind: example1: command not found

I followed instructions from this site: http://www.cprogramming.com/debugging/valgrind.html

this is what the example1 file looks like:

#include <stdlib.h>
int main()
{
    char *x = malloc(100); /* or, in C++, "char *x = new char[100] */
    return 0;
}

I know valgrind is installed on my machine, regardless I ran the following command to make sure:

sudo apt-get install valgrind

Can somebody pls. guide me how to get valgrind working....thx!

Is there definitely an executable called `example1` in your working directory? — Oliver Charlesworth, Mar 25 '12 at 22:54
valgrind runs against a binary, not source. Have you compiled example1? — , Mar 25 '12 at 22:54
It seems the `example` program isn't found. You can verify by running both `valgrind` and `example`: the former won't do any harm but print a usage; the latter is your program. You might want to use `./example` instead. — Dietmar Kühl, Mar 25 '12 at 22:55
thanks guys, I ran it against source. absolutely new to valgrind :-(. I will make the fix and update post — user1155299, Mar 25 '12 at 23:01

score 8 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 25 '12 at 22:54

You forgot to give it the path to the program you wanted to run! Replace example1 with the path to the executable.

For example:

G_SLICE=always-malloc G_DEBUG=gc-friendly  valgrind -v \
  --tool=memcheck --leak-check=full --num-callers=40 \
  --log-file=valgrind.log ./example1

running valgrind

1 Answers1