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Similarly to a stack of plates, adding or removing is only practical at the top. Simple representation of a stack runtime with push and pop operations.. In computer science, a stack is an abstract data type that serves as a collection of elements with two main operations:
The name "peek" is similar to the basic "push" and "pop" operations on a stack, but the name for this operation varies depending on data type and language. Peek is generally considered an inessential operation, compared with the more basic operations of adding and removing data, and as such is not included in the basic definition of these data ...
With a stack stored completely in RAM, this does implicit writes and reads of the in-memory stack: Load X, push to memory; Load 1, push to memory; Pop 2 values from memory, add, and push result to memory; for a total of 5 data cache references. The next step up from this is a stack machine or interpreter with a single top-of-stack register.
An abstract stack is a last-in-first-out structure, It is generally defined by three key operations: push, that inserts a data item onto the stack; pop, that removes a data item from it; and peek or top, that accesses a data item on top of the stack without removal.
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 each step, it chooses a transition by indexing a table by input symbol, current state, and the symbol at the top of the stack. A pushdown automaton can also manipulate the stack, as part of performing a transition. The manipulation can be to push a particular symbol to the top of the stack, or to pop off the top of the stack.
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 .
Stack-based algorithms manipulate data by popping data from and pushing data to the stack. Operators govern how the stack manipulates data. To emphasize the effect of a statement, a comment is often used showing the top of the stack before and after the statement; this is known as the stack effect diagram.