Week 4 - Memory

Question 1

What is a pointer?

Answer 1

It is a variable that stores an address in memory, where some other variable might be stored (like an arrow that guides you to another area)

Question 2

malloc is a function which used to

Answer 2

allocate some number of bytes in memory

Question 3

free is a function which used to

Answer 3

free memory

Question 4

what are garbage values and when do they appear?

Answer 4

They are unknown values that were in memory, from whatever program was running on our computer before. and they appear when we have no specific values in our program

Question 5

The 4 sections of the Memory layout

Answer 5

1-machine code
2-globals
3-heap
4-stack

Question 6

What will happen in the machine code section?

Answer 6

here is where our compiler starts to translate source code into machine code

Question 7

What will happen in the globals section?

Answer 7

here is where will our program read the global variables that we declared in our code

Question 8

What will happen in the heap section?

Answer 8

here is an empty area from wheremalloccan get free memory for our program to use.

Question 9

What will happen in the stack section?

Answer 9

it is used by functions and local variables that we created in our program as they are called, and grows upwards.

Question 10

What is the difference between & and *?

Answer 10

& Provides the address of something stored in memory.
* Instructs the compiler to go to a location in memory.