The Heap Section and Dynamic Memory Allocation

Although simple programs may only need static and automatic variables, sophisticated programs need the ability to allocate and deallocate storage dynamically (at runtime) under program control. In the C and High-Level Assembler (HLA) languages, you would use the malloc and free functions for this purpose. C++ provides the new and delete operators. Pascal uses new and dispose. Other languages provide comparable routines. These memoryallocation routines share a few things in common:

? They let the programmer request how many bytes of storage to allocate.
? They return a pointer to the newly allocated storage (that is, the address
of that storage).
? They provide a facility for returning the storage space to the system once it
is no longer needed so the system can reuse it in a future allocation call.

Dynamic memory allocation takes place in a section of memory known as the heap. Generally, an application refers to data on the heap using pointer variables, either implicitly or explicitly; some languages, like Java, implicitly use pointers behind the programmer’s back. As such, these objects in heap memory are usually referred to as anonymous variables because they are referred to by their memory address (via pointers) rather than by a name. 

The OS and application create the heap section in memory after the program begins execution; the heap is never a part of the executable file. Generally, the operating system and language runtime libraries maintain the heap for an application.

Despite the variations in memory management implementations, it’s still a good idea for you to have a basic idea of how heap allocation and deallocation operate because an inappropriate use of the heap management facilities will have a very negative impact on the performance of your applications.