Memory-consumption test to accompany http://superuser.com/a/767491/94393

malloc-bytes.c

// Compile this with "cc malloc-bytes.c -o malloc-bytes"
// Run with e.g. "./malloc-bytes 1000000" (mallocs 1MB)

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

int main(int argc, char* argv[]) {
	if (argc < 2) {
		fprintf(stderr, "Usage: %s <bytes-to-allocate>\n", argv[0]);
		exit(1);
	}

	size_t bytes = (size_t)atol(argv[1]);
	char* buf = malloc(bytes);
	int i;
	for (i=0; i<bytes; i+=4096) {
		buf[i] = 0;
	}
}