Question

I’ve got a very basic application that boils down to the following code:

char* gBigArray[200][200][200];
unsigned int Initialise(){  
    for(int ta=0;ta<200;ta++)
        for(int tb=0;tb<200;tb++)
            for(int tc=0;tc<200;tc++)
                gBigArray[ta][tb][tc]=new char;
    return sizeof(gBigArray);
}

The function returns the expected value of 32000000 bytes, which is approximately 30MB, yet in the Windows Task Manager (and granted it’s not 100% accurate) gives a Memory (Private Working Set) value of around 157MB. I’ve loaded the application into VMMap by SysInternals and have the following values:

I’m unsure what Image means (listed under Type), although irrelevant of that its value is around what I’m expecting. What is really throwing things out for me is the Heap value, which is where the apparent enormous size is coming from.

What I don’t understand is why this is? According to this answer if I’ve understood it correctly, gBigArray would be placed in the data or bss segment – however I’m guessing as each element is an uninitialised pointer it would be placed in the bss segment. Why then would the heap value be larger by a silly amount than what is required?

Answer 1

It doesn’t sound silly if you know how memory allocators work. They keep track of the allocated blocks so there’s a field storing the size and also a pointer to the next block, perhaps even some padding. Some compilers place guarding space around the allocated area in debug builds so if you write beyond or before the allocated area the program can detect it at runtime when you try to free the allocated space.