How does MASM .DATA? directive work internally [du

Question

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• How to see the memory occupied by initialised array vs uninitialised array 1 answer

In Kip Irvines book I came across the following :

The .DATA? directive declares uninitialized data. When defining a large block of uninitialized data, the .DATA? directive reduces the size of a compiled program. For example, the followingcode is declared efficiently:

.data?

bigArray DWORD 5000 DUP(?) ; 20,000 bytes, not initialized

The following code, on the other hand, produces a compiled program 20,000 bytes larger:

.data

bigArray DWORD 5000 DUP(?) ; 20,000 bytes

What exactly is the .data? directive doing under the hood in the above example to make the program 20k smaller.

Answer 1

The uninitialized data need not be in the compiled binary, just a byte count that the OS loader allocates at run-time when executing your program.