What do you mean by static memory allocation in C programming?

Memory can be allocated in the following two ways −

Static Memory Allocation

Static variable defines in one block of allocated space, of a fixed size. Once it is allocated, it can never be freed.

Memory is allocated for the declared variable in the program.

The address can be obtained by using ‘&’ operator and can be assigned to a pointer.
The memory is allocated during compile time.
It uses stack for maintaining the static allocation of memory.
In this allocation, once the memory is allocated, the memory size cannot change.
It is less efficient.

The final size of a variable is decided before running the program, it will be called as static memory allocation. It is also called compile-time memory allocation.

We can't change the size of a variable which is allocated at compile-time.

Example 1

Static memory allocation is generally used for an array. Let’s take an example program on arrays −

Live Demo

#include<stdio.h>
main (){
   int a[5] = {10,20,30,40,50};
   int i;
   printf (“Elements of the array are”);
   for ( i=0; i<5; i++)
      printf (“%d, a[i]);
}

Output

Elements of the array are
1020304050

Example 2

Let’s consider another example to calculate sum and product of all elements in an array −

Live Demo

#include<stdio.h>
void main(){
   //Declaring the array - run time//
   int array[5]={10,20,30,40,50};
   int i,sum=0,product=1;
   //Reading elements into the array//
   //For loop//
   for(i=0;i<5;i++){
      //Calculating sum and product, printing output//
      sum=sum+array[i];
      product=product*array[i];
   }
   //Displaying sum and product//
   printf("Sum of elements in the array is : %d
",sum);
   printf("Product of elements in the array is : %d
",product);
}

Output

Sum of elements in the array is : 150
Product of elements in the array is : 12000000

Bhanu Priya

Updated on: 09-Mar-2021

2K+ Views

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