C++ allocates abnormally large amout memory for variables

Question

I recently got to know an integer takes 4 bytes from the memory.

First ran this code, and measured the memory usage:

int main()
{
   int *pointer;
         


        

Answer 1

Two explanations:

1. Dynamic memory allocation (on the heap) is not necessarily contiguous. When using new you perform dynamic allocation.
2. If you are including debug symbols (-g compiler flag) your memory usage may be larger than expected.