Firstly, I'd say a leak is a leak. A leak is not defined as "bad" - it's defined as allocated memory not bring freed. Whether the leak is "bad" or not depends o

Firstly, I'd say a leak is a leak. A leak is not defined as "bad" - it's defined as allocated memory not bring freed. Whether the leak is "bad" or not depends on the context, but doesn't change the definition. >> A more vague but more useful definition of a memory leak is that if the memory consumption has a net increase over time, and that increase causes one or more problems, it's a leak. No. Its a problem. Caused by a leak. Your definition falls over for the case where a program is performing the task correctly, but on insufficient hardware (not enough ram) to complete the task.