Exercise on memory management analyzer

exercises/mem_analyzer/README.md

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+# 🧠 Memory Management Analyzer
+
+This project demonstrates how different memory allocation methods (`malloc`, `calloc`, and `mmap`) perform in terms of speed and memory usage in a simulated workload.
+
+---
+
+## 📜 Description
+The program dynamically allocates and frees memory blocks of varying sizes, measuring:
+
+- Allocation and deallocation times.
+- Memory usage via `/proc/self/status` or `/proc/self/statm`.
+- Peak memory consumption during execution.
+
+It produces a report comparing performance across allocation methods.
+
+---
+
+## 🚀 Features
+- **Dynamic Allocation Testing** – compares `malloc`, `calloc`, and `mmap`.
+- **Performance Metrics** – measures allocation/deallocation times.
+- **Memory Usage Tracking** – monitors real-time process memory usage.
+- **Optional Memory Leak Simulation** – detects unfreed memory using Valgrind.
+- **CLI Mode Selection** – choose allocator at runtime (`--malloc`, `--calloc`, `--mmap`).
+
+---
+
+## 🛠️ Build
+```bash
+make
+```
+
+---
+
+## ▶️ Run
+```bash
+./mem_analyzer --malloc
+./mem_analyzer --calloc
+./mem_analyzer --mmap
+```
+
+---
+
+## 🧪 Test & Debug
+```bash
+make valgrind
+```
+
+---
+
+## 📊 Example Output
+```
+Allocator: malloc
+Blocks: 10000
+Average Allocation Time: 0.24 μs
+Average Free Time: 0.18 μs
+Peak Memory Usage: 2.5 MB
+```
+
+---
+
+## 📂 Project Structure
+```
+mem_analyzer/
+ ├── README.md
+ ├── Makefile
+ └── main.c
+```
+
+---
+
+## 🔍 Learning Objectives
+- Understand differences between `malloc`, `calloc`, and `mmap`.
+- Learn to measure memory usage through `/proc`.
+- Practice debugging memory errors with Valgrind.
+- Gain insight into memory allocation strategies in Linux.
+
+---