The stack and the heap

• Executable program can either refer to near memory (the stack) or far memory (the heap)
• Accessing the stack is faster than accessing the heap
• The stack is smaller than the heap
• Variables are allocated on the stack TimeStamp tts;
• Common bug (but hard to trace): stack overflow char veryLongArray[1000000000];
• Memory allocated on the stack is deallocated automatically at the end of the scope where it was allocated (closing brace })
• Memory on the heap can be accessed through user-defined memory allocation
• Memory on the heap must be deallocated explicitly, otherwise memory leaks occur, exhausting all the computer's memory
• Memory on the heap must not be deallocated more than once (causes unpredictable behaviour)