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

I think it depends on how the compiler creates the output program.

The memory usage of a program includes all the sections of the program (like .text, which contains the assembly directives of the program), so it takes some memory in space, when it's loaded.

And for more variables, the memory isn't really contiguous when you allocate some memory (memory-alignment), so it could take more memory than you think it takes.