Thx for the reply. That is what I was hoping for. Specifically, I am interested in RedHat Enterprise Linux 4 and have looked at the code for "free" where, under some conditions, it will release heap memory back to the system. I was having trouble tracking down the source for "delete"/"delete[]" to verify that it did, in fact, call "free" after doing it's thing with destructors & etc. Once again, thx for the info. Kevin On Wed, 25 Jun 2008, John Love-Jensen opined: > Hi Kevin, > > > When memory is released via the C++ "delete" operator, is memory every > > released back to the OS (as it is when "free" is used in C)? > > Under the covers, "delete" uses the C free() routine, for every C++ > platform I've used. (Also, "delete" and "delete[]" do other things, so you > can't just use free or realloc and have things work as desired.) > > If your platform's heap management (Standard C's malloc / free) releases > heap back to the OS, then the answer is: yes the memory is released back to > the OS. > > In my experience, the stock memory management heap routines with that come > with Standard C (malloc, free) do not release heap back to the OS. But > that may be indicative of the platforms I've used, not necessarily true for > all malloc/free. > > (I'm sure there are some C++ compilers that do not use malloc/free as part > of new/delete... but I can not name any.) > > HTH, > --Eljay
