Process memory layout

From: Sean (seanatpurdue_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 05/29/05 

Date: Sun, 29 May 2005 14:45:40 -0500

I am wondering if my understanding that shared library is loaded at a
place between stack and heap space in memory space, like this:
Please correct me if my understanding is wrong.

--------------
| | high address
---------------
| stack |
| | |
| | |
| V |
| ... |
---------------
| bss of |
| shared lib |
---------------
| text of |
| shared lib |
---------------
| ... |
| heap |
---------------
| bss |
---------------
| initialized |
----------------
| app text |
----------------
| .... | low address
----------------
| kernel add |
----------------

Then, if an executable uses a function(say, asctime() ) in a shared
library(say, libc.so), the loader only resolves that function and loads
it to the process memory space, like the following figure.
If this is true, text/bss of a function is much smaller than a single
page, it seems the system performance is not optimized: this process
uses asctime() to occupy a hole page, and another process(which only
uses atoi() in its executable) uses atoi() to occupy another page. It
seems not efficient. I guess I misunderstood some points.

--------------
| | high address
---------------
| stack |
| | |
| | |
| V |
| ... |
---------------
| bss related |
| to asctime |
---------------
| text of |
| asctime() |
---------------
| ... |
| heap |
---------------
| bss |
---------------
| initialized |
----------------
| app text |
----------------
| .... | low address
----------------
| kernel add |
----------------

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