Call stack
stack data structure that stores information about the active subroutines of a computer program
In computer science, a call stack is a stack data structure that stores information about the active subroutines and inline blocks of a computer program. 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. Many computer instruction sets provide special instructions for manipulating stacks.
A call stack is used for several related purposes, but the main reason for having one is to keep track of the point to which each active subroutine should return control when it finishes executing. An active subroutine is one that has been called, but is yet to complete execution, after which control should be handed back to the point of call. Such activations of subroutines may be nested to any level (recursive as a special case), hence the stack structure. For example, if a subroutine DrawSquare calls a subroutine DrawLine from four different places, DrawLine must know where to return when its execution completes. To accomplish this, the address following the instruction that jumps to DrawLine, the return address, is pushed onto the top of the call stack as part of each call.
Description
Since the call stack is organized as a stack, the caller of a procedure, or the prologue of that procedure, pushes the return address onto the stack, and the called subroutine, when it finishes, pulls or pops the return address off the call stack and transfers control to that address; similarly, the prologue of an inline block pushes a stack frame and the epilog pops it.
“Call stack” enters the record as stack data structure that stores information about the active subroutines of a computer program. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Call, stack and data can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Call stack” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.