Notes

2) Purify builds a band of unused memory to create a narrow "fence" around each malloc'd area. This method has only a statistical chance of catching a small class of memory errors. If an error hops the "fence" it escapes to raise havoc later on. The fence technique catches some errors, which may not be good enough.

Insure++ has perfect knowledge of all data, pointer, and memory operations, because it studies the source code. So Insure++ captures every memory error, for every type of memory - global (static), local (stack), dynamically allocated (heap) and even shared.

3) Purify uses a heuristic algorithm to catch some memory leaks. If it catches a leak, Purify shows only where the memory was malloc'd, not where it was lost.

Insure++, with its access to the source code, not only detects every memory leak, but also pinpoints the exact statement which caused the leak, immediately when the leak occurs.

4) Purify keeps the most recent mallocs and frees in a fixed size list. All errors related to older operations, pushed off the list by more recent mallocs and frees, will escape undetected. Statistically, the fixed size list approach will catch some errors. For your customers, this may not be good enough.

Insure++ has perfect knowledge of memory and variable usage, and perfect recall of all memory operations. So it captures EVERY error, no matter how many times malloc and free are called.

5) Purify checks the arguments to only certain "well-known" C functions. The only return value which can be checked is from malloc. Checking malloc is good, but leaving all other functions unchecked may not be good enough.

Insure++ has a built-in library with thousands of interfaces to common libraries, allowing full checking on parameters and return values. Using Insure++'s innovative Total Quality Software tm (TQS tm) technology, you have complete control over what checks are done, and can even perform complicated parameter checking on your own libraries and functions.