grep -f leaks large amount of memory

[Justin Pryzby]

Please see <http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=195719>
where it is documented that grep -f uses large amounts of memory, and
it is suggested that it might be leaking memory, causing linearly
increasing mem usage.

You can test with:

  grep '^c...............' /usr/share/dict/words >/tmp/words
  grep -f /tmp/words /usr/share/dict/words

The culprit seems to be

   1024816 bytes in 2596 blocks are still reachable in loss record 18 of 18
   at 0x1B90459D: malloc (vg_replace_malloc.c:130)
   by 0x804C5EC: xmalloc (dfa.c:143)
   by 0x804E9BB: build_state (dfa.c:2330)
   by 0x804FC7E: dfaexec (dfa.c:2372)
   by 0x8054DE2: EGexecute (search.c:402)
   by 0x804A6C5: grepbuf (grep.c:732)
   by 0x804B1A5: grepfile (grep.c:851)
   by 0x804C39D: main (grep.c:1788)

(valgrind --leak-check=full --show-reachable=yes 
./build-tree/grep-2.5.1/src/grep -f /tmp/words /usr/share/dict/words)

-- 
Clear skies,
Justin