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The stack is often used to store variables of fixed length local to the currently active functions. Programmers may further choose to explicitly use the stack to store local data of variable length. If a region of memory lies on the thread's stack, that memory is said to have been allocated on the stack, i.e. stack-based memory allocation (SBMA).
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 ...
The stack segment contains the call stack, a LIFO structure, typically located in the higher parts of memory. A "stack pointer" register tracks the top of the stack; it is adjusted each time a value is "pushed" onto the stack. The set of values pushed for one function call is termed a "stack frame". A stack frame consists at minimum of a return ...
This type of stack is also known as an execution stack, program stack, control stack, run-time stack, or machine stack, and is often shortened to simply the "stack". Although maintenance of the call stack is important for the proper functioning of most software , the details are normally hidden and automatic in high-level programming languages .
The task and its creator share the stack frames that existed at the time of task creation, but not the creator's subsequent frames nor the task's own frames. This was supported by a cactus stack, whose layout diagram resembled the trunk and arms of a Saguaro cactus. Each task had its own memory segment holding its stack and the frames that it owns.
A stack may be implemented as, for example, a singly linked list with a pointer to the top element. A stack may be implemented to have a bounded capacity. If the stack is full and does not contain enough space to accept another element, the stack is in a state of stack overflow. A stack is needed to implement depth-first search.
In figure C above, when an argument larger than 11 bytes is supplied on the command line foo() overwrites local stack data, the saved frame pointer, and most importantly, the return address. When foo() returns, it pops the return address off the stack and jumps to that address (i.e. starts executing instructions from that address).
Stack Overflow is a question-and-answer website for computer programmers. It is the flagship site of the Stack Exchange Network . [ 2 ] [ 3 ] [ 4 ] It was created in 2008 by Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky .