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Basic Stack Frame Illustrated

Two registers, %ebp (frame pointer) and %esp (stack pointer) contain the addresses of the bottom and the top, respectively, of a function's stack frame when it is executing.

Memory, including stack, when main has called f, and f has set up its stack frame.

low memory address Text (compiled, linked code)
  Global Data
  heap area
(%esp) (top of f's stack frame)

f's stack frame

(%ebp) bottom of f's stack frame
  main's stack frame


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