How does a process use memory???

[brunger at venus.ycc.yale.edu]

I am looking for a description of how memory is used by a process in a Unix
system. Is there any thing I can count on across processors?

Background:

We have a very large program written in FORTRAN and C. The program performs
very long simulations (up to 1 week of Cray time). During a run it may perform
thousands of mallocs and frees. Most of the time this allocated space is tied
to a FORTRAN array by calculating the array index for the given address.
I am trying to provide a mechanism that will provide a map of the process's
memory at a given time.  Showing our allocated space in relating to the code,
data (the FORTRAN array in particular), stack, etc. space. Some systems seem
to do a good job at reclaiming freed space while others do not. I have assumed
that the systems programmers used the optimum algorithm for their architecture,
but I would like to verify this while learning something myself.

please respond to:

m at jacobi.biology.yale.edu

Mark McCallum

Thanks in advance.

Also thank you for the usefull replies to a previous question on csh variable
manipulation.