Memory, Memory Address in Programming Language

A computer provides a Random Access Memory (RAM) for storing executable program code as well as the data the program manipulates. This memory can be thought of as a contiguous sequence of bits, each of which is capable of storing a binary digit (0 or 1). Typically, the memory is also divided into groups of 8 consecutive bits (called bytes). The bytes are sequentially addressed. Therefore each byte can be uniquely identified by its address.

Figure: Bits and bytes in memory.

The C++ compiler generates executable code which maps data entities to memory locations. For example, the variable definition

int salary = 65000;

causes the compiler to allocate a few bytes to represent salary. The exact number of bytes allocated and the method used for the binary representation of the integer depends on the specific C++ implementation, but let us say two bytes encoded as a 2’s complement integer. The compiler uses the address of the first byte at which salary is allocated to refer to it. The above assignment causes the value 65000 to be stored as a 2’s complement integer in the two bytes allocated.

Figure:  Representation of an integer in memory.

While the exact binary representation of a data item is rarely of interest to a programmer, the general organization of memory and use of addresses for referring to data items (as we will see later) is very important.