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At function return, the stack pointer is instead restored to the frame pointer, the value of the stack pointer just before the function was called. Each stack frame contains a stack pointer to the top of the frame immediately below. The stack pointer is a mutable register shared between all invocations. A frame pointer of a given invocation of ...
Stackless Python, or Stackless, is a Python programming language interpreter, so named because it avoids depending on the C call stack for its own stack. In practice, Stackless Python uses the C stack, but the stack is cleared between function calls. [ 2 ]
A built-in function, or builtin function, or intrinsic function, is a function for which the compiler generates code at compile time or provides in a way other than for other functions. [23] A built-in function does not need to be defined like other functions since it is built in to the programming language. [24]
It also shows that the c function was called by b, which was called by a, which was in turn called by the code on line 15 (the last line) of the program. The activation records for each of these three functions would be arranged in a stack such that the a function would occupy the bottom of the stack and the c function would occupy the top of ...
On the Microsoft Visual C++ compiler, the this pointer is passed in ECX and it is the callee that cleans the stack, mirroring the stdcall convention used in C for this compiler and in Windows API functions. When functions use a variable number of arguments, it is the caller that cleans the stack (cf. cdecl).
Using a trampoline for all function calls is rather more expensive than the normal C function call, so at least one Scheme compiler, Chicken, uses a technique first described by Henry Baker from an unpublished suggestion by Andrew Appel, [21] in which normal C calls are used but the stack size is checked before every call.
To avoid this overhead, compilers usually avoid using virtual method tables whenever the call can be resolved at compile time. Thus, the call to f1 above may not require a table lookup because the compiler may be able to tell that d can only hold a D at this point, and D does not override f1 .
Stacks are an important way of supporting nested or recursive function calls. This type of stack is used implicitly by the compiler to support CALL and RETURN statements (or their equivalents) and is not manipulated directly by the programmer. Some programming languages use the stack to store data that is local to a procedure.