How to find the memory used by any object

Question

class Help
{
public:
        Help();
        ~Help();

        typedef std::set Terms;
        typedef std::map &         


        

Answer 1

Short Answer: No

Long Answer:
-> The basic object yes. sizeof() but this is only useful for limited things.
-> A container and its contained members: NO

If you make assumptions about the structures used to implement these objects you can estimate it. But even that is not really useful ( apart from the very specific case of the vector).

The designers of the STL deliberately did not define the data structures that should be used by these containers. There are several reasons for this, but one of them (in my opinion) is to stop people making assumptions about the internals and thus try and do silly things that are not encapsulated by the interface.

So the question then comes down to why do you need to know the size?
Do you really need to know the size (unlikely but possible).

Or is there a task you are trying to achieve where you think you need the size?