You didn't showed code, but this effect appears to be the result of a memory leak.
So, this TStringList (I'll call it parent) have objects associated, which have its own child TStringLists (which I suppose have only strings).
The easier way to do this memory management is letting the TStringList do it for you:
- If in the Delphi version you have TStringList has the OwnsObjects property, set it to true. With this, every call to Delete and Clear methods will call the destructor of the objects associated with the parent list - and this will work even if cll parent.Free. If it doesn't implement, you'll have to do it yourself - overriding the Delete, Clear and Destroy methods of TStringList in a descendant class.
- Make sure the destructor of the child objects clean correctly the objects created inside it - if one of the stringlists in a child objects has owned objects, you could use the same strategy in the above item.
An (oversimplified) example:
TMyChildObject = class
private
fMyListOfMagazineNames,
// This one will have TBitmap instances associated with the dogs names
fMyListOfDogNamesAndPhotos : TStringList;
fName: String;
public
//[properties, methods, whatever]
property Name: string read fName write fName;
constructor Create; virtual;
destructor Destroy; override;
end;
constructor TMyChildObject.Create;
begin
inherited Create;
fMyListOfMagazineNames = TStringList.Create;
fMyListOfDogNamesAndPhotos = TStringList.Create;
fMyListOfDogNamesAndPhotos.OwnsObjects := True;
end;
destructor TMyChildObject.Destroy;
begin
fMyListOfMagazineNames.Free;
fMyListOfDogNamesAndPhotos.Free;
inherited Destroy;
end;
An example of use:
var
MyObjList: TStringList;
begin
MyObjList := TStringList.Create;
MyObjList.OwnsObjects := True;
// Create your child objects
// And Free them at once
MyObjList.Free;
end;
