Go 100 mistakes - #26: Slices and memory leaks

 

 

 

 

As a rule of thumb, remember that slicing a large slice or array can lead to potential high memory consumption. The remaining space won’t be reclaimed by the GC, and we can keep a large backing array despite using only a few elements. Using a slice copy is the solution to prevent such a case.

 

We have seen that slicing can cause a leak because of the slice capacity. But what about the elements, which are still part of the backing array but outside the length range? Does the GC collect them?