massif and top memory usage differences

Question

I am tracing how much memory an object is using. I have simple program which simply instantiate the object and the delete it.

If I look at the output of massif or if I look at the virtual memory from top I get completely different result. Do you have any ideas? When I use top I've simply added a cin >> a just to pause the program.

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 22 '13 at 23:51

0

massif measures how much heap you're using, but top command shows whole memory allocation for the computer, not for only you program's heap

answered Oct 22 '13 at 23:51

Iłya Bursov

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I see, how to solve it? I've seen `--pages-as-heap` but it is not available on the version I have – Ruggero Turra Oct 22 '13 at 23:52
@RuggeroTurra I dont understand what you're trying to solve, what is the problem? – Iłya Bursov Oct 22 '13 at 23:54
I want to see the total amount of memory used by my program – Ruggero Turra Oct 23 '13 at 00:13
total memory used by program is program size + heap size + stacks size – Iłya Bursov Oct 23 '13 at 00:14
hm, use masiff... it shows all numbers, maybe except program size - just look via `ls` command to check size of binary – Iłya Bursov Oct 23 '13 at 00:20

massif and top memory usage differences

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