6.1 Stack Frames

The call stack is divided up into contiguous pieces called stack frames, or frames for short; each frame is the data associated with one call to one function. The frame contains the arguments given to the function, the function's local variables, and the address at which the function is executing.

When your program is started, the stack has only one frame, that of the function main. This is called the initial frame or the outermost frame. Each time a function is called, a new frame is made. Each time a function returns, the frame for that function invocation is eliminated. If a function is recursive, there can be many frames for the same function. The frame for the function in which execution is actually occurring is called the innermost frame. This is the most recently created of all the stack frames that still exist.

Inside your program, stack frames are identified by their addresses. A stack frame consists of many bytes, each of which has its own address; each kind of computer has a convention for choosing one byte whose address serves as the address of the frame. Usually this address is kept in a register called the frame pointer register (see section $fp) while execution is going on in that frame.

No value for GDBN assigns numbers to all existing stack frames, starting with zero for the innermost frame, one for the frame that called it, and so on upward. These numbers do not really exist in your program; they are assigned by No value for GDBN to give you a way of designating stack frames in No value for GDBN commands.

Some compilers provide a way to compile functions so that they operate without stack frames. (For example, the No value for NGCC option

‘-fomit-frame-pointer’

generates functions without a frame.) This is occasionally done with heavily used library functions to save the frame setup time. No value for GDBN has limited facilities for dealing with these function invocations. If the innermost function invocation has no stack frame, No value for GDBN nevertheless regards it as though it had a separate frame, which is numbered zero as usual, allowing correct tracing of the function call chain. However, No value for GDBN has no provision for frameless functions elsewhere in the stack.

frame args

The frame command allows you to move from one stack frame to another, and to print the stack frame you select. args may be either the address of the frame or the stack frame number. Without an argument, frame prints the current stack frame.

select-frame

The select-frame command allows you to move from one stack frame to another without printing the frame. This is the silent version of frame.