C++ Memory Management

In this exercise, we simulate a memory allocation (we just want to see the effect of fragmentation and of compacting memory fragments into larger ones). For this, we manage a list of memory segments in our program: typedef struct segment { int start ; int size ; int status ; struct segment * next ; } segment_t ; The above segment descriptor describes a memory segment in terms of its start address, its size and whether it is ALLOCATED or FREE. This descriptor is part of a list (contains a pointer to next segment descriptor). Initially, there is only one segment with status == FREE, describing the complete memory as one segment.