Program that displays amount of free memory

HI
I would like to somthing like free function that displays amount of free memory in linux, so I want to write a program that displays amount of free memory on the system, so I suppose I have to use a function or something that displays memory data. It's not useful to type free -m to display amount of free memory, I need to have displayed amount of free memory at begining or end of some program........like...... amount of free memory = 480MB
and then program runs forward. I know I described weird - the point is I need a line in program or program that tells to the system to display amount of free memory on the screen .
Have a nice Day

Matt

Why didn't you post in the Linux programming forum?

Anyway, I suggest you write a function that opens /proc/meminfo and extracts the data you need.

Moved

cwr is right, just read /proc/meminfo that is what free does anyhow..

you can `cat /proc/meminfo` to see the format,
and since free is free you can also get the source for free for free.. :)