Re: Memory allocated for a given Pointer.

From:
"Jim Langston" <tazmaster@rocketmail.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
Tue, 4 Jul 2006 07:50:46 -0700
Message-ID:
<Gfvqg.292$Ak3.46@fe04.lga>
"Robbie Hatley" <bogus.address@no.spam> wrote in message
news:L3rqg.115929$H71.59219@newssvr13.news.prodigy.com...

"Frederick Gotham" <fgothamNO@SPAM.com> wrote:

Sabiyur posted:

Hi All,
      Is there any way to find out how much memory is allocated for a
given pointer.


#include <cstddef>

int main()
{
    int *p;

    std::size_t amount_mem = sizeof p;
}


That doesn't work, my dear fellow. It always yields "4",
regardless of WHAT p points to. Why? Because p is a pointer,
and pointers are always 4 bytes on 32-bit comptuers (which
are about 99% of the computers in the world?).


He was responding to the question "How much memory is allocated for a given
pointer". And on 32-bit computers pointers are allocated 4 bytes of memory.
He then went on to answer what the OP actually MEANT to ask.

If you did THIS:

  int* p = new int[10];
  cout << "Size of array is " << sizeof (*p) << endl;

Will it print 10? No, it prints 4, but this time for a
totally different reason. (*p) isn't an array of 10 ints;
it's the int that p points to! (That is, element 0 of the
dynamically allocated array.) Since ints are 4 bytes on 32-bit
computers, we again get "4".

There's just no way to do it.

Which is why it's better to use std::vector, std::list, or
std::deque for this kind of thing:

  std::list<std::string> Names;
  Names.push_back("Frederick Gotham");
  Names.push_back("Robbie Hatley");
  Names.push_back("Sabiyur");
  Names.push_back("Ian Collins");
  Names.push_back("Howard");
  Names.push_back("Goalie_Ca");
  cout << Names.size() << " people have responded to this thread" << endl;

Prints "6 people have responded to this thread".

Hi-jack "malloc" and "new" by writing your own. Store all the addresses
in some sort of look-up table.


Spoken like a true C programmer. You sound like my friend Ron,
the firmware guru. :-)

Me, I like standard containers better. You don't have to worry
about memory allocation (and deallocation) that way, and getting
current size is always as easy as "object.size()".

--
Cheers,
Robbie Hatley
Tustin, CA, USA
lonewolfintj at pacbell dot net
(put "[usenet]" in subject to bypass spam filter)
http://home.pacbell.net/earnur/

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