About
The primary purpose of a call stack is to store the return addresses of each active function (subroutine). When a function (subroutine) is called, the location (address) of the instruction at which the calling routine can later resume is stored in the call stack.
More generally, a call stack is a stack data structure that stores information about the active subroutines (function) of a computer program.
Same as:
Call stack is also known as :
- execution stack,
- program stack,
- control stack,
- run-time stack,
- or machine stack,
and is often shortened to just the stack.
The process is as follow:
- The caller pushes the return address onto the stack (winding)
- The caller calls the subroutine
- The subroutine, when it finishes, pulls and remove the return address off the call stack (unwinding)
- The subroutine call the return address.
If the pushing consumes all of the space allocated for the call stack, an error called a wiki/stack overflow occurs, generally causing the program to crash.
There is usually exactly one call stack associated with a process
Articles Related
Management
Manipulation
- high-level programming languages hide the call stack from the programmer.
- assembly languages require programmers to be involved with manipulating the stack.