Pointers and Heap Management

In addition to space on the runtime stack, languages such as Ada, C$,$ C$++,$ and Java also provide

for allocating space dynamically from heap memory. Such space is commonly used for arrays

whose size is determined dynamically at runtime and for various linked structures such as linked

lists, trees, and graphs. A variable that contains a heap memory reference literally contains a

memory address and is commonly referred to as a pointer$.$

A simple linked list would consist of nodes, each of which would contain a value field and a pointer

to the next node in the list. Using an integer value field as an example, such a node would be defined

in C$++$: