Execution of a processing task within a data processing system is controlled by executing the processing task including allocating memory areas for data storage and then suspending an actual execution path of said processing task at a given execution point to perform memory management. The memory management involves identifying one or more data items occurring in the course of execution and accessible to the processing task at the given execution point, which specify reference values pointing to respective ones for the memory areas. A correlation is determined between reference values corresponding to identified data items and memory areas allocated during the execution up to the given execution point. A memory management operation is performed on allocated memory areas in dependence upon results of the correlation.