C++ function memory usage

In order to compare various sorting algorithms, I am looking for a way to see how much peak memory a function uses. Figuring out the time they take to complete is easy, but this has stumped me. Anyone have a clue?

Unfortunately, the C/C++ standard library is crap and does not include a standard function to determine free/used memory (Keep it portable! Maybe some platform doesn't use memory!). You'll need to check for either a non-standard function provided by your compiler (look for mem, core, memory, free, etc.) or a function provided by your OS (careful with that though; prefer private bytes to working set size). Then you measure memory used before running the stuff, and the maximum of the memory used in each iteration.