How to increase memory allocation to program

Question

When I try to initialize a 3D array of size 300*300*4 in a C program, my program stops running and reports stack overflow error. The system I am using has 3GB RAM, which should be sufficeint. Is there any way to increase memory allocated to a program? I am using Dev C++ on Windows Vista.

Answer 1

Either use malloc()/free() (or new[]/delete[] for C++), or a global array, or a local static array. If you try to create a non-static array within a function, it gets allocated on the stack and stacks are generally not very large.

You can also try initialising the array backwards; some OSs grow the stack dynamically as page faults occur, and since on x86 the stack grows numerically downwards, initialising backwards can help.

Answer 2

You need to increase how much stack space your program can use.

You can set the maximum stack size in the properties dialog under to "Linker | System | Stack Reserve Size"

Answer 3

Even if you have 3 GB of RAM, the stack size is limited by the OS and is typically small, as large structures like this are likely allocated on the heap, not the stack.

Since you're using C++, maybe you could use Boost?

boost::multi_array<int, 3> x (boost::extents[300][300][4]);

Answer 4

As you are using DevC++, presumably you are using the gcc compiler and via it the ld linker. The linker has an option -stack stacksize which allows you to control the amount of memory allocated to the stack. How you would go about doing this from DevC++ I don't know.

I also don't know why anyone would use DevC++ at all - it is buggy and no longer being developed. You should consider changing to a better IDE - Code::Blocks has just had a new major release, is superior to DevC++ in every respect, and comes with a much more modern C++ compiler.