extern etext; extern edata; extern end;
On some systems the names of these symbols are preceded by underscores, thus: _etext, _edata, and _end. These symbols are also defined for programs compiled on Linux.
At the start of program execution, the program break will be somewhere near &end (perhaps at the start of the following page). However, the break will change as memory is allocated via brk(2) or malloc(3). Use sbrk(2) with an argument of zero to find the current value of the program break.
$ ./a.out
First address past:
program text (etext) 0x8048568
initialized data (edata) 0x804a01c
uninitialized data (end) 0x804a024
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
extern char etext, edata, end; /* The symbols must have some type,
or "gcc -Wall" complains */
int
main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
printf("First address past:\n");
printf(" program text (etext) %10p\n", &etext);
printf(" initialized data (edata) %10p\n", &edata);
printf(" uninitialized data (end) %10p\n", &end);
exit(EXIT_SUCCESS);
}