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

You are allocating more than just an int, you are also allocating a heap block which has overhead (which varies by platform). Something needs to keep track of the heap information. If you instead allocated an array of ints, you'd see memory usage more in line with your expectations.