Adal Chiriliuc wrote: > MSVC 7.1 and 8.0 malloc always uses the Windows heap functions > (HeapAlloc & friends) if running on Windows 2000 or newer > (malloc.c and heapinit.c). >> So it seems that for both Linux (gcc) and Win (msvc) the memory is > released to the operating system. How so? HeapFree does not return the memory to the system. From http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/memory/base/heap_functions.asp "Once the pages are committed, they are not decommitted until the process is terminated or until the heap is destroyed by calling the HeapDestroy function." Regards, Martin