The software engineering community has produced numerous tools, techniques, and methodologies for practitioners to analyze and optimize memory usage during software execution. However, little is known about the actual needs of programmers when analyzing memory behavior and how they use tools to address those needs. We conducted an exploratory study (i) to understand what a programmer needs to know when analyzing memory behavior and (ii) how a programmer finds that information with current tools. From our observations, we provide a catalog of 34 questions programmers ask themselves when analyzing memory behavior. We also report a detailed analysis of how some tools are used to answer these questions and the difficulties participants face during the process. Finally, we present four recommendations to guide researchers and developers in designing, evaluating, and improving memory behavior analysis tools.

中文翻译：

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在内存分析过程中提出和回答问题

软件工程社区已经为从业者提供了大量工具、技术和方法来分析和优化软件执行期间的内存使用情况。然而，人们对程序员在分析内存行为时的实际需求以及他们如何使用工具来满足这些需求知之甚少。我们进行了一项探索性研究（i）以了解程序员在分析内存行为时需要知道什么，以及（ii）程序员如何使用当前工具找到这些信息。根据我们的观察，我们提供了程序员在分析内存行为时问自己的 34 个问题的目录。我们还详细分析了如何使用一些工具来回答这些问题以及参与者在此过程中面临的困难。最后，我们提出四项建议来指导研究人员和开发人员设计、评估和改进记忆行为分析工具。