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Useful Information for Purify

Makefiles

nice thing to do with makefiles is to create a target normally called pure which links the program using Purify. Then the simple command "make pure" will compile the program with purify.

Common Error Message

These are some of the common errors encountered and what they mean. Please read the Purify Manual for others.

• ABR / ABW Array Bounds Read/Write - Going off an end of an array
• FMR / FMW Free Memory Read/Write - Referencing memory you already freed
• MLK / PLK Memory Leak/Potential Leak - malloced memory without a pointer to it
• NPR / NPW Null Pointer Read/Write - trying to reference a Null pointer
• UMC / UMR Uninitialize Memory Copy/Read - Using a variable before it is initialized

• Placement
  The .purify file in the installation directory will affect every use of Purify. The .purify file in your home directory will affect every program you compile. Lastly, the .purify file a directory will affect every compilation in that directory.
• Suppressing a Warning
  In order to suppress a message you need to specify the type of message (ABR for example) and the function from which it is called. Some matching is supported for function names. Here is an example:

  suppress UMR Xm*

  With this in a referenced .purify file, Purify would not report any reads of uninitialized memory by any function whose name begins with "Xm".
• Command-line Options
  
  • Text only => -log-file=FILENAME. If filename is "stderr" the errors will be piped out of stderr.
  • Viewing output of "Text only" in a window => purify -view-file=FILENAME
  • Increasing depth of functions listed in trace => -chain-length=DEPTH