Memory Management

1And in Conclusion$\dots$¶

C has 3 pools of memory.

• Static storage (aka the data segment): global variable storage, basically permanent, entire program run

• The Stack: local variable storage, parameters, return address

• The Heap (dynamic storage): malloc() grabs space from here, free() returns it.

A fourth area of the program’s address space stores the program itself. This section is often in a read-only text segment.

Be careful when allocating buffers on the stack and heap! The heap is the biggest source of subtle bugs in C code.

Take CS 162 for more!

2Extra References¶

• Professor Emeritus Brian Harvey’s notes on C

• Professor Emeritus Paul Hilfinger’s notes on memory management