Where in memory are my variables stored in C?

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You got some of these right, but whoever wrote the questions tricked you on at least one question:

  • global variables ——-> data (correct)
  • static variables ——-> data (correct)
  • constant data types —–> code and/or data. Consider string literals for a situation when a constant itself would be stored in the data segment, and references to it would be embedded in the code
  • local variables(declared and defined in functions) ——–> stack (correct)
  • variables declared and defined in main function —–> heap also stack (the teacher was trying to trick you)
  • pointers(ex: char *arr, int *arr) ——-> heap data or stack, depending on the context. C lets you declare a global or a static pointer, in which case the pointer itself would end up in the data segment.
  • dynamically allocated space(using malloc, calloc, realloc) ——–> stack heap

It is worth mentioning that “stack” is officially called “automatic storage class”.

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