Call Stack - Structure

Structure

A call stack is composed of stack frames (also called activation records or activation frames). These are machine dependent and ABI-dependent data structures containing subroutine state information. Each stack frame corresponds to a call to a subroutine which has not yet terminated with a return. For example, if a subroutine named DrawLine is currently running, having been called by a subroutine DrawSquare, the top part of the call stack might be laid out like this:

A diagram like this can be drawn in either direction as long as the placement of the top, and so direction of stack growth, is understood. Furthermore, independently of this, architectures differ as to whether call stacks grow towards higher addresses or towards lower addresses. The logic of the diagram is independent of the addressing choice.

The stack frame at the top of the stack is for the currently executing routine. The stack frame usually includes at least the following items (in push order):

  • the arguments (parameter values) passed to the routine (if any);
  • the return address back to the routine's caller (e.g. in the DrawLine stack frame, an address into DrawSquare's code); and
  • space for the local variables of the routine (if any).

Read more about this topic:  Call Stack

Famous quotes containing the word structure:

    “Man is more disposed to domination than freedom; and a structure of dominion not only gladdens the eye of the master who rears and protects it, but even its servants are uplifted by the thought that they are members of a whole, which rises high above the life and strength of single generations.”
    —Karl Wilhelm Von Humboldt (1767–1835)

    “The verbal poetical texture of Shakespeare is the greatest the world has known, and is immensely superior to the structure of his plays as plays. With Shakespeare it is the metaphor that is the thing, not the play.”
    —Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)

    “There is no such thing as a language, not if a language is anything like what many philosophers and linguists have supposed. There is therefore no such thing to be learned, mastered, or born with. We must give up the idea of a clearly defined shared structure which language-users acquire and then apply to cases.”
    —Donald Davidson (b. 1917)