MEMORY MANAGEMENT WITH COMPACTION OF DATA BLOCKS

A method and apparatus are provided for management of stored data in the form of data blocks interspersed with free blocks in a fixed size system memory. A compaction procedure, periodically applied to the memory, repositions those data blocks identified (107) as moveable such as to increase the extent of free block contiguity within the memory. The search for a suitable free block (114-117) for housing a relocated data block is sequentially applied for each data block; a data block is moved (118) to a free block if the free block is greater than or equal to the data block size and less than or equal to the size of the data block when added to the size of any free block abutting the original data block position.