a.k.a. memory management

The Operating system allocates memory to processes, so that a process can only access that portion of memory.

This memory is divided into:

• Call stack, or just the stack
• Memory heap, where dynamically allocated variables are stored.
• text section.

The addresses that the program uses to reference variables are actually Virtual memory addresses, which the operating system translates to physical memory.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_management

What and where are the stack and heap?

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/18446171/how-do-compilers-assign-memory-addresses-to-variables