Basic question on new and delete

[GreyGeek]

Consider a program that continuously calls 'new' in a loop without calling delete. This program is 'leaking' memory for every iteration of the loop and will eventually exhaust the physical memory in the system. The fact that this memory will be released when the program terminates is irrelevant here, because the program leaks more and more memory as it runs.

Ok, I see where you are coming from. While the program is running it is constantly leaking memory and will run out, probably crashing the program, if nothing else.

But, after the program quites aren't the leaks still leaks... i.e., hasn't the memory been lost to the system until a reboot?

And, doesn't QOBJECT take care of heap space that wasn't returned to memory when a) the object based on QOBJECT loses scope or b) the program quites? (Doesn't a=b?) Otherwise, if quiting the program recovers all leaked memory then the only purpose for QOBJECT is to prevent memory leaks (do garbage collection?) WHILE the program is running. Yet, I've seen several examples of programs that show a heap's size being reduced each time an app is run and then quites, so the the memory isn't returning to the heap (OS?) when the program quits.