Let's try it on Mac OS X (Leopard, 10.5.6).
$ /usr/bin/time -l uname -v
Darwin Kernel Version 9.6.0: Mon Nov 24 17:37:00 PST 2008; root:xnu-1228.9.59~1/RELEASE_I386
0.00 real 0.00 user 0.00 sys
385024 maximum resident set size
...
Do you really think the simple `uname' could take 385,024 KB (376 MB) memory ? It also reports 282624 maxrss for a small C program that only contains an empty main and is compiled by `gcc -O2'.
Here is a comparison.
FreeBSD 7.1, kern_clock.c
527 rss = pgtok(vmspace_resident_count(vm));Note pgtok is often defined as follows.
528 if (ru->ru_maxrss < rss)
529 ru->ru_maxrss = rss;
#define pgtok(x) ((unsigned long)(x) * (PAGE_SIZE / 1024))
Mac OS X 10.5.6, kern_exit.c
612 p->p_ru->ru_maxrss = tinfo.resident_size;task.c
1205 if (flavor == TASK_BASIC2_INFO_32) {
...
1210 basic_info->resident_size = pmap_resident_max(...);
1211 } else {
1212 basic_info->resident_size = pmap_resident_count(...);
1213 }
1214 basic_info->resident_size *= PAGE_SIZE;
Does Apple forget `/ 1024' or something? Hope Linux would not give a strange number.