eolas/zk/Heap_memory.md
2024-04-20 14:10:04 +01:00

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18bl Heap_memory
memory
Saturday, April 20, 2024

Heap memory

Along with Stack_memory, programs make use of heap memory during runtime.

Heap memory does not use a standardised data structure and can be accessed from any point within the program.

Whereas stack memory with it's LIFO structure has memory management built-in when programs allocate memory from the heap they must manually deallocate it when it is no longer required. This process of "freeing memory" is known as garbage collection. In a language like C, this is the explicit concern of the programmer and is not abstracted away. Failure to properly manage garbage collection is what causes Memory_leaks.