adding printf increases the size of data segment

Question

This is what I had earlier

#include <stdio.h>

int main()
{
    return 0;
}

And I got this

rohit:~/workspace/C $ size const
   text    data     bss     dec     hex filename
   1122     276       4    1317     525 const

After making the below change, the data section size increases by 4.

int main()
{
    printf("Hello World!!");
    return 0;
}

rohit:~/workspace/C $ size const
text    data     bss     dec     hex filename
1112     280       8    1400     578 const

What's the reason for this behaviour. I am using Ubuntu on x86. gcc is the compiler.

Answer 1

TL;DR: Every used string uses the memory for itself, as well as sizeof(char*) additional memory for a pointer to its first character.

---

You're probably on a 32bit architecture, or at least compile your program for that one. Four bytes are exactly one pointer on that architecture, so let us have a look at the assembler ( gcc -S ):

    .file   "main.c"
    .section    .rodata
.LC0:
    .string "Hello World!!"

There's a .rodata entry, namely "Hello World!"" as a .string . That's a const char * , which takes four bytes on a 32bit x86 arch. If we remove that string, the .rodata section stays empty. The string is gone, therefore we can get rid of the pointer. Note that the pointer itself is not read-only. That's why you end up with an entry in data to begin with.

You can check this easily with gcc -Os main.c . The following programs should have the same size output (and result in almost the same assembler code):

#include <stdio.h>

int main()
{
    printf("hello world!");
    return 0;
}

#include <stdio.h>

int main()
{
    const char * mystring = "hello world!";
    printf(mystring);
    return 0;
}

After all, we need the pointer for printf ( $.LC0 ):

movq    $.LC0, -8(%rbp)
movq    -8(%rbp), %rax
movq    %rax, %rdi
movl    $0, %eax
call    printf