Leaks

From REALbasicWiki

A leak is an unused allocation of memory or an unwanted object that still exists even though the program does not reference it any more.

These leaks may just occupy memory or may as well cause other side effects by them not being destructed when expected.

Due to REALbasic's object allocation scheme that is based solely on reference counting, such leaks can be created by a programmer easily, but resolved by him just as well. The simplest way is to create two objects that each contain a reference to the other. This creates a Circular Reference which keeps the objects alive even if no other parts of the program references either of them any more.

To find such object leaks, the circular references must be detected and eliminated. Once they're identified, the usual approach is to add a "Close" or "Release" method to the object in question, and call it explicitly to ask it to clear its references to other objects. This will untie the circular references and allow all objects to be destructed then.

See here for some tips on how to detect and avoid such leaks.