Increase of the amount of RAM used by class inheritance in object-oriented programming

Novikov Pavel Vladimirovich

The paper deals with the way to investigate by library function ‘system’ the amount of RAM used in Borland C++. The research shows that the accuracy of functioning ‘system’ is 1 Kb. Experimentally shown that the addition of classes in inheritance hierarchy increases the amount of RAM used. There is also the established coincidence of the research results given in the paper with the results of the other researches in Microsoft Visual Studio 98 based on analysis of physical addresses of the objects’ components. The impossibility of reducing the researched amount of RAM used by overriding methods, by virtual methods and by using private access to the components of classes is under discussion in the paper.

Keywords:Class inheritance, amount of RAM used, inheritance hierarchy, override, virtual, private access