Allocated large blocks of memory on 64 bit linux.

["Chris Jefferson" <chris@bubblescope.net>]

I apologise for this slightly off-topic message, but I believe it can
best be answered here, and hope the question may be interesting.

Many libraries have some kind of dynamically sized container (for
example C++'s std::vector). When the container is full a new block of
memory, typically double the original size, is allocated and the old
data copied across.

On a 64 bit architecture, where the memory space is massive, it seems
at first glance a sensible thing to do might be to first make a buffer
of size 4k, and then when this fills up, just straight to something
huge, like 1MB or even 1GB, as the memory space is effectively
infinate compared to the physical memory. Obvious most of this buffer
may never be written to, as the object never grows large enough to
fill it.

What is the overhead of allocating memory which is never used? Is this
a sensible course of action on 64-bit architectures?

Thank you