Compiled program size

[TheCuz]

Not sure if this is the correct place to post this but here it goes....

The program that I made has a compiled size of 114K, but when I start the program and look at it in task manager (on a NT4) it says it is taking 2.5MB of memory. How can this be?

[Valik]

You can't honestly think that the size on disk is any indication of how much memory a program will use when running. I can write a 2KB application which will use 500 MB of RAM.

[herewasplato]

...compiled size of 114K, but when I start the program and look at it in task manager (on a NT4) it says it is taking 2.5MB of memory.

It has been a while since I've used NT4, but I seem to remember that task manager has the column that shows the Virtual Memory usage (VM Size) turned off by default... you might want to turn that column on and take a look at what some other programs do to your RAM and VM. [see menubar > view > select columns.]

On XP, Notepad is about 69,120 bytes (or about 68KB) and yet it takes up about 2MB RAM and about 1MB VM with no text in it. Add some text; say, about 150000 characters via several copy/paste operations and the RAM/VM usage goes up.

I cannot offer you an explanation as to why, I just wanted to assure you that most (if not all) programs do this. If want to have some fun (okay, so our definition of fun may differ) run this script:

Dim $a[16000000]
Dim $b[16000000]
Dim $c[16000000]
Dim $d[16000000]
Dim $e[16000000]
Dim $f[16000000]
Dim $g[16000000]
Dim $h[16000000]
Dim $i[16000000]
Dim $j[16000000]
Dim $k[16000000]
Dim $h[16000000]
Dim $i[16000000]
MsgBox(0,"AutoIt","RAM/VM")

Watch the row of info within task manager for AutoIt or if you complied it - that row.

[TheCuz]

Thanks for at least some attempt herewasplato, I apperciate the effort. At least it wasn't condescending.

[w0uter]

upx loads the entire unpacked exe into the memory.