The curse of Dennis D. Spreen

The Curse

Occassionally I’m in need of some small tools for the projects I’m working on (Delphi, PHP, Java, C++), so I use my favourite compiler (Delphi) and start hacking. In the late 90’s I’ve released a bunch of freeware components and units for CodeGears Delphi (former Borland) – some of them were rock solid coded, but well, some were just fast hacks needed for those small utilities. The later one applies to THTMLParser, a HTML parsing unit which was released 1998 with full source code on the Delphi Super Page.

Years later (2006), I’ve stumbled across a page called “Memory Leak and the curse of Dennis Spreen” which refered to a bug in the code of the THTMLParser which led to a memory leak if used on a lot of HTML files. Since I wrote this parser for a one-time-run-utility I didn’t noticed the memory leak. But other coder used this source code to enhance it with some nice features while leaving the memory leak bug in the source code. So alot of HTML parser were released then by different people based on the THTMLParser code – but all with one thing in common: my memory leak bug (now refered to as “the curse”).

Sure it was frustrating while searching for a HTML parser component, finding some and downloading them but all with the same memory leak bug inside:-)
I’ve read about the complaints on the parser (no one questioned me ever directly about this memory bug, even though I’ve put my web adress in all source code files) and finally fixed the memory leak.

But due to the nature of the internet the curse will still be living on, since all the other not fixed components floating around still have this memory leak bug…