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by Agnieszka Figiel.
Original Post: Valgrind! where have you been all my life???
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Now this is something they should teach you in kindergarten – do not go out there into the world of wild C pointers alone! I just discovered Valgrind, a great memory check tool for Linux that monitors memory reads and writes in your program and produces really helpful output regarding memory errors and memory leaks. I turned to it when the situation was really hopeless and it worked so well for me that I might actually rediscover the joy of programming in C, not to mention enthusiasm for my so far frustrating master thesis :)
I’m not yet very good at interpreting its output, but I guess I won’t make one step from now on without it :) It helped me much more than ccmalloc, which I tried at first. With ccmalloc you have to link your program to an external library; with valgrind you simply execute your program preceding it with a valgrind command. So it works with the binary! Any binary actually, you can for instance type valgrind ls -l to make sure the command you probably use most often doesn’t have memory leaks :) So this is language independent and I actually can’t wait to test it with a ruby script :)
And, oh yes, it’s free :)
Naturally, with my inclination towards foreign languages the first thing that attracted my attention after the initial “wooooooooaaaaaah, yes!!!” was – what’s behind this name. For those similarly inclined there’s an excerpt from Valgrind’s FAQ:
1.1. How do you pronounce “Valgrind”?
The “Val” as in the world “value”. The “grind” is pronounced with a short ‘i’—ie. “grinned” (rhymes with “tinned”) rather than “grined” (rhymes with “find”).
Don’t feel bad: almost everyone gets it wrong at first.
1.2. Where does the name “Valgrind” come from?
From Nordic mythology. Originally (before release) the project was named Heimdall, after the watchman of the Nordic gods. He could “see a hundred miles by day or night, hear the grass growing, see the wool growing on a sheep’s back” (etc). This would have been a great name, but it was already taken by a security package “Heimdal”.
Keeping with the Nordic theme, Valgrind was chosen. Valgrind is the name of the main entrance to Valhalla (the Hall of the Chosen Slain in Asgard). Over this entrance there resides a wolf and over it there is the head of a boar and on it perches a huge eagle, whose eyes can see to the far regions of the nine worlds. Only those judged worthy by the guardians are allowed to pass through Valgrind. All others are refused entrance.
It’s not short for “value grinder”, although that’s not a bad guess.
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