Programming question: memory leaks

[javasaurus]

I'm under the impression that when a program suffers from memory leaks, the memory is freed up again once the program is closed. Is it possible for memory leaks to persist after closing the offending program?

Comments

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

it's not as much a problem in Linux because people actually paid attention to it, having access to the memory usage and access to the code to fix any found problems.