I downloaded the .ply files in the Stanford 3D scanning repository, and am using Stanford's code from that page (ply.h, plyfile.c) to parse them. However, looking at this code, I see that it's rife with mallocs that are never freed. I could close my eyes and look the other way, but it makes my teeth itch.
I can think of two workarounds:
One is to use Hans Boehm's garbage collector, or something similar, which redefines "malloc" so that it does so within a garbage collector. I've never used this library, but perhaps there's a way to have it operate just on the mallocs in the Stanford code and not anywhere else.
The other workaround is to use a different parser, preferably a C++ one with nicely RAII-ified memory management. I see a few alternative parsers and converters listed at the above link, but rather than kill a day or two trying them all, I was hoping to get a recommendation here.
Can anybody recommend a way to parse .ply files without memory leaks, either by containing the memory leaks in the Stanford parser, or using a different parser, or by some third method I haven't thought of?
Try also RPly.