Visualize Heap Fragmentation with ASCII Art Colors

See the Heap Holes

Repeated allocate/free patterns of different sizes leave unusable gaps between live blocks. Visualizing free holes explains why long-running servers restart or switch to pool allocators even when total bytes look fine.

ASCII Visualization Idea

Map each heap byte to a character: . free, # allocated, | boundary. After a fragmentation script, long runs of . between # clusters show external fragmentation.

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• External fragmentation: free bytes exist but not contiguously
• Internal fragmentation: allocator rounds up request size
• Compaction is rare in malloc; embedders use pools instead
• Log allocation order to reproduce worst cases

Working Through the Exercise

Keep the relevant documentation open while you implement. When your output disagrees with the reference, trace one failing case by hand before changing random lines.

• Trace first: walk one failing input step by step
• Read the manual: skim the official doc for the mechanism named in this task
• Compare baselines: save measurements from the prior step so speedups are honest

Why for this exercise

You will simulate a simple heap and print colored ASCII maps after a fragmentation workload. This exercise requires identifying a hole that blocks a large allocation request.