How to get memory usage at runtime using C++?

On Linux, I've never found an ioctl() solution. For our applications, we coded a general utility routine based on reading files in /proc/pid. There are a number of these files which give differing results. Here's the one we settled on (the question was tagged C++, and we handled I/O using C++ constructs, but it should be easily adaptable to C i/o routines if you need to):

#include <unistd.h>
#include <ios>
#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>
#include <string>

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
//
// process_mem_usage(double &, double &) - takes two doubles by reference,
// attempts to read the system-dependent data for a process' virtual memory
// size and resident set size, and return the results in KB.
//
// On failure, returns 0.0, 0.0

void process_mem_usage(double& vm_usage, double& resident_set)
{
   using std::ios_base;
   using std::ifstream;
   using std::string;

   vm_usage     = 0.0;
   resident_set = 0.0;

   // 'file' stat seems to give the most reliable results
   //
   ifstream stat_stream("/proc/self/stat",ios_base::in);

   // dummy vars for leading entries in stat that we don't care about
   //
   string pid, comm, state, ppid, pgrp, session, tty_nr;
   string tpgid, flags, minflt, cminflt, majflt, cmajflt;
   string utime, stime, cutime, cstime, priority, nice;
   string O, itrealvalue, starttime;

   // the two fields we want
   //
   unsigned long vsize;
   long rss;

   stat_stream >> pid >> comm >> state >> ppid >> pgrp >> session >> tty_nr
               >> tpgid >> flags >> minflt >> cminflt >> majflt >> cmajflt
               >> utime >> stime >> cutime >> cstime >> priority >> nice
               >> O >> itrealvalue >> starttime >> vsize >> rss; // don't care about the rest

   stat_stream.close();

   long page_size_kb = sysconf(_SC_PAGE_SIZE) / 1024; // in case x86-64 is configured to use 2MB pages
   vm_usage     = vsize / 1024.0;
   resident_set = rss * page_size_kb;
}

int main()
{
   using std::cout;
   using std::endl;

   double vm, rss;
   process_mem_usage(vm, rss);
   cout << "VM: " << vm << "; RSS: " << rss << endl;
}

David Robert Nadeau has put a good self contained multi-platform C function to get the process resident set size (physical memory use) in his website:

/*
 * Author:  David Robert Nadeau
 * Site:    http://NadeauSoftware.com/
 * License: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License
 *          http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en_US
 */

#if defined(_WIN32)
#include <windows.h>
#include <psapi.h>

#elif defined(__unix__) || defined(__unix) || defined(unix) || (defined(__APPLE__) && defined(__MACH__))
#include <unistd.h>
#include <sys/resource.h>

#if defined(__APPLE__) && defined(__MACH__)
#include <mach/mach.h>

#elif (defined(_AIX) || defined(__TOS__AIX__)) || (defined(__sun__) || defined(__sun) || defined(sun) && (defined(__SVR4) || defined(__svr4__)))
#include <fcntl.h>
#include <procfs.h>

#elif defined(__linux__) || defined(__linux) || defined(linux) || defined(__gnu_linux__)
#include <stdio.h>

#endif

#else
#error "Cannot define getPeakRSS( ) or getCurrentRSS( ) for an unknown OS."
#endif





/**
 * Returns the peak (maximum so far) resident set size (physical
 * memory use) measured in bytes, or zero if the value cannot be
 * determined on this OS.
 */
size_t getPeakRSS( )
{
#if defined(_WIN32)
    /* Windows -------------------------------------------------- */
    PROCESS_MEMORY_COUNTERS info;
    GetProcessMemoryInfo( GetCurrentProcess( ), &info, sizeof(info) );
    return (size_t)info.PeakWorkingSetSize;

#elif (defined(_AIX) || defined(__TOS__AIX__)) || (defined(__sun__) || defined(__sun) || defined(sun) && (defined(__SVR4) || defined(__svr4__)))
    /* AIX and Solaris ------------------------------------------ */
    struct psinfo psinfo;
    int fd = -1;
    if ( (fd = open( "/proc/self/psinfo", O_RDONLY )) == -1 )
        return (size_t)0L;      /* Can't open? */
    if ( read( fd, &psinfo, sizeof(psinfo) ) != sizeof(psinfo) )
    {
        close( fd );
        return (size_t)0L;      /* Can't read? */
    }
    close( fd );
    return (size_t)(psinfo.pr_rssize * 1024L);

#elif defined(__unix__) || defined(__unix) || defined(unix) || (defined(__APPLE__) && defined(__MACH__))
    /* BSD, Linux, and OSX -------------------------------------- */
    struct rusage rusage;
    getrusage( RUSAGE_SELF, &rusage );
#if defined(__APPLE__) && defined(__MACH__)
    return (size_t)rusage.ru_maxrss;
#else
    return (size_t)(rusage.ru_maxrss * 1024L);
#endif

#else
    /* Unknown OS ----------------------------------------------- */
    return (size_t)0L;          /* Unsupported. */
#endif
}





/**
 * Returns the current resident set size (physical memory use) measured
 * in bytes, or zero if the value cannot be determined on this OS.
 */
size_t getCurrentRSS( )
{
#if defined(_WIN32)
    /* Windows -------------------------------------------------- */
    PROCESS_MEMORY_COUNTERS info;
    GetProcessMemoryInfo( GetCurrentProcess( ), &info, sizeof(info) );
    return (size_t)info.WorkingSetSize;

#elif defined(__APPLE__) && defined(__MACH__)
    /* OSX ------------------------------------------------------ */
    struct mach_task_basic_info info;
    mach_msg_type_number_t infoCount = MACH_TASK_BASIC_INFO_COUNT;
    if ( task_info( mach_task_self( ), MACH_TASK_BASIC_INFO,
        (task_info_t)&info, &infoCount ) != KERN_SUCCESS )
        return (size_t)0L;      /* Can't access? */
    return (size_t)info.resident_size;

#elif defined(__linux__) || defined(__linux) || defined(linux) || defined(__gnu_linux__)
    /* Linux ---------------------------------------------------- */
    long rss = 0L;
    FILE* fp = NULL;
    if ( (fp = fopen( "/proc/self/statm", "r" )) == NULL )
        return (size_t)0L;      /* Can't open? */
    if ( fscanf( fp, "%*s%ld", &rss ) != 1 )
    {
        fclose( fp );
        return (size_t)0L;      /* Can't read? */
    }
    fclose( fp );
    return (size_t)rss * (size_t)sysconf( _SC_PAGESIZE);

#else
    /* AIX, BSD, Solaris, and Unknown OS ------------------------ */
    return (size_t)0L;          /* Unsupported. */
#endif
}

Usage

size_t currentSize = getCurrentRSS( );
size_t peakSize    = getPeakRSS( );

For more discussion, check the web site, it also provides a function to get the physical memory size of a system.

Old:

maxrss states the maximum available memory for the process. 0 means that no limit is put upon the process. What you probably want is unshared data usage ru_idrss.

New: It seems that the above does not actually work, as the kernel does not fill most of the values. What does work is to get the information from proc. Instead of parsing it oneself though, it is easier to use libproc (part of procps) as follows:

// getrusage.c
#include <stdio.h>
#include <proc/readproc.h>

int main() {
  struct proc_t usage;
  look_up_our_self(&usage);
  printf("usage: %lu\n", usage.vsize);
}

Compile with "gcc -o getrusage getrusage.c -lproc"

On linux, if you can afford the run time cost (for debugging), you can use valgrind with the massif tool:

http://valgrind.org/docs/manual/ms-manual.html

It is heavy weight, but very useful.

A more elegant way for Don Wakefield method:

#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>

using namespace std;

int main(){

    int tSize = 0, resident = 0, share = 0;
    ifstream buffer("/proc/self/statm");
    buffer >> tSize >> resident >> share;
    buffer.close();

    long page_size_kb = sysconf(_SC_PAGE_SIZE) / 1024; // in case x86-64 is configured to use 2MB pages
    double rss = resident * page_size_kb;
    cout << "RSS - " << rss << " kB\n";

    double shared_mem = share * page_size_kb;
    cout << "Shared Memory - " << shared_mem << " kB\n";

    cout << "Private Memory - " << rss - shared_mem << "kB\n";
    return 0;
}