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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-22T16:24:56+00:00

Originally a pedantics war on @Als answer here , it also sparked a discussion

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Originally a pedantics war on @Als answer here, it also sparked a discussion in the C++ chatroom.

This article by Herb Sutter distinguishes between the two, but is also over a decade old, as it clearly was written before 2000 and also talks about the standard draft, which can only mean C++98 draft. Though, I still expect Herb, as part of the committee, to be knowledgeable about this stuff.

I know of this and this question/answer, but the second just cites Herb’s article while the first cites another source that simply rejects the use of the term “heap”, aka they are both not exactly satisfactory. Also, I can’t find any free-store or freestore tag on SO (until this question, I created the former one now).

Now, what is really the difference, if any?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Well, the current C++ standard only uses the term “free store” – the only use of “heap” in the Standard is to describe the heap data structure in the Standard Library. So “heap” is not a very useful term to use when trying to discuss C++ problems accurately, though of course everyone does it.

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