Difference between variables' addresses

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Why do variable addresses differ by a specific amount each time I run a program (as in "printf("%d %d\n", &a, &b);". It will print "1000 988" in one run, "924 912" in another, "1288 1276", and so on and so forth)? Does the compiler occupy a set amount of memory after each variable declaration where nothing can be written? If yes, what does it depend on? Using some variables in a program of mine, the smallest difference between them was 12 bytes, and it reached up to 212. This was the only case where the difference was not a multiple of twelve (in other cases it was 24, 36 or 48 bytes). Is there any reason behind that? Since my variables were of type int (occupying 4 bytes in my system), could the difference between my variable addresses be less than 12 (for example 4)? Do those address differences depend on the variable types? If yes, in what way? Thank you in advance!

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