How is the memory layout of a C/C++ program?

Question

I know that there are sections like Stack, Heap, Code and Data. Stack/Heap do they use the same section of memory as they can grow independently? What is this code section? When

Answer 1

(Note: The following applies to Linux)

The stack and heap of a process both exist in the "same" part of a process's memory. The stack and heap grow towards each other (initially, when the process is started, the stack occupies the entire area that can be occupied by the combination of the stack and the heap; each memory allocation (malloc/free/new/delete) can push the boundary between the stack and the heap either up or down). The BSS section, also located on the same OS-allocated process space, is in its own section and contains global variables. Read-only data resides in the rodata section and contains such things as string literals. For example, if your code has the line:

char tmpStr[] = "hello";

Then, the portion of the source code containing "hello" will reside in the rodata section.

A good, thorough book on this is Randall E. Bryant's Computer Systems.