Resource management (computing)

In computer programming, resource management refers to techniques for managing resources (components with limited availability).

Computer programs may manage their own resources^[which?] by using features exposed by programming languages (Elder, Jackson & Liblit (2008) is a survey article contrasting different approaches), or may elect to manage them by a host – an operating system or virtual machine – or another program.

Host-based management is known as resource tracking, and consists of cleaning up resource leaks: terminating access to resources that have been acquired but not released after use. This is known as reclaiming resources, and is analogous to garbage collection for memory. On many systems, the operating system reclaims resources after the process makes the exit system call.