strings: strings.Builder case memory leak

[szyhf]

What version of Go are you using (go version)?

Tried both 1.13.0 and 1.12.9.

$ go version

Does this issue reproduce with the latest release?

What operating system and processor architecture are you using (go env)?

In docker image alpine:3.8, build cmd is GOOS=linux GOARCH=amd64 go build on macOS 10.14.6

go env Output

$ go env

What did you do?

Using a sync.Pool to reuse strings.Builder.

https://play.golang.org/p/TkWbxGu4PRJ

I use strings.Builder to build sql, and exec the sql-str every times, but I found that the memory will increase slowly, then I called pprof/heap and found that the strings.(*Builder).WriteString inuse a lot of memory and looks never released.

What did you expect to see?

The memory not increase unexpectedly

What did you see instead?

The memory not increase unexpectedly

Really thanks for help!

[ianlancetaylor]

Please show us more of the program. The memory profile you show is exactly what I would expect if your program never releases the strings built with strings.Builder.

That said, while there may be a bug here somewhere, it does not make sense to put strings.Builder values into a sync.Pool. Allocating a new strings.Builder costs nothing. This is not a case where you should be using a sync.Pool.

[szyhf]

Please show us more of the program. The memory profile you show is exactly what I would expect if your program never releases the strings built with strings.Builder.

That said, while there may be a bug here somewhere, it does not make sense to put strings.Builder values into a sync.Pool. Allocating a new strings.Builder costs nothing. This is not a case where you should be using a sync.Pool.

---

Thanks for help.

Yes, you are right, when I read the detail code of strings.Builder I recognized that it's different from bytes.Buffer, so I remove the sync.Pool of strings.Builder hours ago and upgrade our prod application and hope if it help.

---

We are using https://github.com/astaxie/beego/tree/develop/orm to exec sql, the var ormer in demo is orm.Ormer config as mysql, and I skip the init of it.

The main target of the function is to build a sql like insert into test_tbl (id,dr) values (1,'2'),(2,'3'),...(x,'y') on duplicate key update dr=values(dr);

The demo of our function is here: https://play.golang.org/p/o0cEeZ7o7xl

The function is called every 3min by a time.Ticker.

The memory increase really slow, the memory monitor of previous 7 days is blow:

This case me to read heap to looking for what is leaking.

Thanks again~

[martisch]

Closing as this looks to be resolved and working as intended.

[szyhf]

Hi, @martisch @ianlancetaylor

I've tried some solution and I think I found the leaking code, but I don't know why(I think it's a bug).

First solution, I remove the usage of sync.Pool, I create a new strings.Builder every time, and the leaking is still slow but continues.

// Key code of first solution
sb := new(strings.Builder)

// full code writing ref: https://play.golang.org/p/o0cEeZ7o7xl
// sb.WriteString(...)
// sb.WriteRune(...)

_, err := ormer.Raw(strings.TrimSuffix(sb.String(), ","), sqlParamList...).Exec()

The second solution worked and the memory is not leaking.

// Key code of second solution

sb := new(strings.Builder)

// full code writing ref: https://play.golang.org/p/o0cEeZ7o7xl
// sb.WriteString(...)
// sb.WriteRune(...)

sql := sb.String()
sql = strings.TrimSuffix(sql, ",")
sb.Reset()
sb = nil
_, err := ormer.Raw(sql, sqlParamList...).Exec()

Here is the memory usage curve:

I don't really understand why the first solution will case the strings.Builder not release the memory ?

Here is the heap of first solution:

Here is the heap of second solution:

[ianlancetaylor]

How are you measuring memory use?

[szyhf]

Hi @ianlancetaylor

The curve is provide by monitor-agent of Aliyun ECS(Elastic Compute Service), is the memory usage of the ECS.

The ECS only run the app-server on docker , and I've use htop via ssh to check the memory of the process, the memory is really high-load on the app-server.

---

About our usage:

We are running a same app-server for different customers on different ECS, some has a lot users and some are not.

Firstly, I found the memory keep high-load on a app-server with lots users, and I found the memory usage going up unusual by curve, than I tried pprof for heap and found the strings.Builder.WriteString() keeps a lot of memory.

Cause of our business needs, I can't test the solution on that server, I use a much smaller server with less users to test the first solution and second solution.

The smaller server has the some leaking too, but less users makes it much more slowly, the heap shows that the leaking is on strings.Builder too.

---

Thanks for help, let me know If any other information I can provide,.

[szyhf]

Hi, @martisch @ianlancetaylor, here is the additional information:

I tried another code in another server:

sql := sb.String()
sql = strings.TrimSuffix(sql, ",")
_, err := ormer.Raw(sql, sqlParamList...).Exec()

Just a little different of the second solution, and the leak is shown again.

Here is the heap:

And here is the heap for second solution running till now ( no leaking and stable):

[szyhf]

Really sorry that I made a mistake that set sb = nil of the second solution case the server panic and auto-restart every hour, that case the memory stable and not sure to solve problem, I'm running the fix server and waiting for new heap ……