Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
In computing, a stack trace (also called stack backtrace [1] or stack traceback [2]) is a report of the active stack frames at a certain point in time during the execution of a program. When a program is run, memory is often dynamically allocated in two places: the stack and the heap. Memory is continuously allocated on a stack but not on a heap.
In computer programming, tracing garbage collection is a form of automatic memory management that consists of determining which objects should be deallocated ("garbage collected") by tracing which objects are reachable by a chain of references from certain "root" objects, and considering the rest as "garbage" and collecting them.
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 ...
For example, one common use of software tracing, in/out tracing, produces output at the entry point and return of functions or methods so that a developer can visually follow the execution path, often including parameters and return values, in a debugger or text-based log file (this can be seen as a run-time analog of a sequence diagram).
In assembly language programming, the function prologue is a few lines of code at the beginning of a function, which prepare the stack and registers for use within the function. Similarly, the function epilogue appears at the end of the function, and restores the stack and registers to the state they were in before the function was called.
I would like to see more about the history behind when these were implemented in different computing systems. I see a strong parallel to telephone switching, but can't find any sources. See this video about the No 5 Crossbar on YouTube (XKyXCZV_faY) at 9:31 about what is basically a stack trace for a mechanical computer.
Newer processors contain a dedicated stack engine to optimize stack operations. Pentium M was the first x86 processor to introduce a stack engine. In its implementation, the stack pointer is split among two registers: ESP O , which is a 32-bit register, and ESP d , an 8-bit delta value that is updated directly by stack operations.
The language, inspired by C, includes added functions and variables specific to tracing. D programs resemble AWK programs in structure; they consist of a list of one or more probes (instrumentation points), and each probe is associated with an action.