Knowledge Base

FIX: VBS 2.0 String Formatting Functions Leak Memory

Article ID: 171365

Article Last Modified on 10/24/2003

Microsoft Visual Basic, Scripting Edition 2.0
Microsoft Active Server Pages 4.0

This article was previously published under Q171365

SYMPTOMS

Applications that use the Visual Basic Scripting (VBS) version 2.0 string formatting functions, such as FormatNumber and FormatCurrency, may experience memory leaks. The increased resource usage caused by these memory leaks is particularly important when VBS is used in the Active Server Pages (ASP) environment due to the high volume nature of Web servers.

CAUSE

There are known code defects in the following VBS 2.0 functions, which promote resource leaks:

Filter
FormatCurrency
FormatDateTime
FormatNumber
FormatPercent
Replace

RESOLUTION

In VBS version 2.0, there are two workarounds for this problem:

Avoid using these functions, especially in high-volume environments such as ASP.
Create your own string formatting functions to replace those provided by VBS. In the case of ASP, this would best be done by creating a server-side component (COM object) that exposes the appropriate formatting methods.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a bug in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article. This bug was corrected in Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.

Keywords: kbbug kbfix kbie500fix KB171365