I'm developing a physics simulation, and as I'm rather new to programming, I keep running into problems when producing large programs (memory issues mainly). I know about dynamic memory allocation and deletion (new / delete, etc), but I need a better approach to how I structure the program.Let's say I'm simulating an experiment which is running for a few days, with a very large sampling rate. I'd need to simulate a billion samples, and run over them.As a super-simplified version, we'll say a program takes voltages V[i], and sums them in fives:i.e. NewV[0] = V[0] + V[1] + V[2] + V[3] + V[4]then NewV[1] = V[1] + V[2] + V[3] + V[4] + V[5]then NewV[2] = V[2] + V[3] + V[4] + V[5] + V[6]...and this goes on for a billion samples.In the end, I'd have V[0], V[1], ..., V[1000000000], when instead the only ones I'd need to store for the next step are the last 5 V[i]s. How would I delete / deallocate part of the array so that the memory is free to use again (say V[0] after the first part of the example where it is no longer needed)? Are there alternatives to how to structure such a program?I've heard about malloc / free, but heard that they should not be used in C++ and that there are better alternatives.Thanks very much!tldr; what to do with parts of arrays (individual elements) I don't need anymore that are taking up a huge amount of memory?
Professional way to produce a large problem without filling up huge arrays: C++, free memory from part of an array
c++;data;memory;array;dynamic
What you describe, smoothing by fives, is a finite impulse response (FIR) digital filter.  Such filters are implemented with circular buffers.  You keep only the last N values, you keep an index into the buffer that tells you where the oldest value is, you overwrite the current oldest value with the newest one at each step, and you step the index, circularly, each time.You keep your collected data, that you are going to crunch down, on disk.Depending on your environment, this may be one of those places where you're better off getting experienced help.  At a university, you put a note up on the bulletin board in the Computer Science Department, offering student wages (or even student consulting rates) for a few hours of work, to help you crunch your data.  Or maybe you offer Undergraduate Research Opportunity points.  Or something.