What happens with memory usage after exec*()

Question

C parent program does some processing and allocates memory, then calls execvp(). What will happen with all the allocated but not freed memory? Is it automatically freed or stays as a garbage?

Answer 1

exec*() replaced the memory of the old process completely with the new program. This includes all allocated memory, so there is no garbage staying behind. But note that other resources like file descriptors are not automatically freed or closed.