NAME

       Devel::Leak - Utility for looking for perl objects that are not reclaimed.

SYNOPSIS

         use Devel::Leak;
         ... setup code

         my $count = Devel::Leak::NoteSV($handle);

         ... code that may leak

         Devel::Leak::CheckSV($handle);

DESCRIPTION

       Devel::Leak has two functions "NoteSV" and "CheckSV".

       "NoteSV" walks the perl internal table of allocated SVs (scalar values) - (which actually
       contains arrays and hashes too), and records their addresses in a table. It returns a
       count of these "things", and stores a pointer to the table (which is obtained from the
       heap using malloc()) in its argument.

       "CheckSV" is passed argument which holds a pointer to a table created by "NoteSV". It re-
       walks the perl-internals and calls sv_dump() for any "things" which did not exist when
       "NoteSV" was called. It returns a count of the number of "things" now allocated.

CAVEATS

       Note that you need a perl built with -DDEBUGGING for sv_dump() to print anything, but
       counts are valid in any perl.

       If new "things" have been created, "CheckSV" may (also) report additional "things" which
       are allocated by the sv_dump() code.

HISTORY

       This little utility module was part of Tk until the variable renaming in perl5.005 made it
       clear that Tk had no business knowing this much about the perl internals.

AUTHOR

       Nick Ing-Simmons <nick@ni-s.u-net.com>