if i create a C program i can declare hundreds of variables some of which could contain a large bitmap (i just declare them i dontt actually put data into them) and the size of the executable would not be affected. however if i declare a "label" as it is so called in asm and i dont even put data into it the size of the excutable is affected. e.g. if i have a empty program that just declares label which is say 2000 bytes in size, the size of the executable is increased. shouldn't the amount of RAM the applications uses be affected instead of the amount of space the executable takes up? there must be a way to stop this from happening and ill probably sound stupid if there is .

There are different ways of declaring data.
In your data section if you use dd 0 then that is taking up space whether you use it or not. If you use rd 1 it reserves the space for 1 dword.

What your thinking about in C, when you declare a variable it's being created on the stack of the function you dclared it in OR your using memory allocation api's (ie HeapAlloc) to create space in virtual memory for the large variables.

Look into the VirtualAllocate api if you want to store data but not in your data section.

Variables in C are defined exactly the same way as locals in fasm. Try compiling the same code in C but give 'static' before data definition ie. instead of 'int a;' write 'static int a;' and you'll see the file also got bigger

thanks for the info.... nothing is ever simple

If you want small executable, but need a .data buffer, use rb 2000, to reserve bytes, like r22 said.