title: How to determine the actual memory usage of a data structure
body: <p>In data structures, I know that the size of the structure depends on the internal links from one section to another.  Is there a way, aside from JProfiler to tell exactly how much memory is tied up in a particular structure?</p>
  
  <p>For example, the class project this semester has to do with applying various structures to a song database.  The projects have covered arrays, lists, unrolled lists and trees.  What I would like to do is see how much memory is used.  For example, a linked list has a memory requirement of 3N, but I would like to see how much space a node is taking up in my project.</p>
  
  <p>JProfiler looks like it would work, but $500 is out of my price range, and I would like to use it for all the structures covered this semester, not the three applied so far.</p>