Heap Management

Applications allocate and manipulate memory primarily in their application heap. As you have seen, space in the application heap is allocated and released on demand. When the blocks in your heap are free to move, the Memory Manager can often reorganize the heap to free space when necessary to fulfill a memory-allocation request. In some cases, however, blocks in your heap cannot move. In these cases, you need to pay close attention to memory allocation and management to avoid fragmenting your heap and running out of memory.

This section provides a general description of how to manage blocks of memory in your application heap. It describes

relocatable and nonrelocatable blocks
properties of relocatable blocks
heap purging and compaction
heap fragmentation
dangling pointers
low-memory conditions

For examples of specific techniques you can use to implement the strategies discussed in this section, see "Using Memory" beginning on Using Memory .

Heap Management

Relocatable and Nonrelocatable Blocks

Properties of Relocatable Blocks

Memory Reservation

Heap Purging and Compaction

Heap Fragmentation

Dangling Pointers

Invalid Handles

Low-Memory Conditions