📅 Date: Feb 5, 2026
🔥 Topic: Stack vs Heap, new/delete, Memory Leaks

🏠 Static vs Dynamic Allocation

Until now, I used int arr[5];. This is Static Allocation (Stack Memory).
Problem: Size is fixed. If I need more space later, I can't get it.

Solution: Dynamic Allocation (Heap Memory). We can ask for memory during runtime using the new keyword.

🧹 The 'new' and 'delete' Keywords

int *arr = new int[5]; // Allocates array on Heap
arr[0] = 10;

// IMPORTANT: We must manually free this memory
delete[] arr;

⚠️ Memory Leak (The Silent Killer)

If I create memory using new but forget to delete it, that space stays occupied forever (until the program ends).
This is called a Memory Leak. In long-running servers, this crashes the system!

💭 Thoughts

Manual memory management is risky. That's why C++ introduced Vectors (coming tomorrow) to handle this automatically.