Memory allocation in C

Question

How do I inspect in what parts of my memory my heap, stack etc lie? I am currently looking at a program in C, and in looking at the .elf file I can see what memory addresses the program is using, but I don't know if it's in the heap or stack.

Answer 1

That's quite hard to know from a static analysis of the compiled code itself. You should be able to see any static initialized data areas, and also static uninitialized (BSS) sections, but exactly how those are loaded with respect to stack, heap and so on is down to the platform's executable loader.

Answer 2

you could try using ollydbg, which is a free debugger. the one drawback to this is it shows everything in assembly form, but it will show you what's in your stack, heap, and even what is in your registers. I'm not sure if this is what you are looking for.

Answer 3

If you are working in embedded platform , you should probably use some linker scripts(lcf files) along with building the program, then you can identify in detail all the sections(stack,heap,intvec,bss,text,code) ,its placement in the memory (whether in L1 cache,L2 cache or DDR) and its starting/ending address while loading into the board.

The thing is that, please have a look into the linker manual(you can find it in the compiler installation directory) for proper understanding of the keywords in the lcf.

Also there is one more way to analyse the sections, you can create the "map file" for your project and go through it.It will list all sections in the program and its addresses.