Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
The Stack and the Heap
While a program is running, its data must be stored in memory. How much memory is required
for an item, and where and how it is stored, depends on its type.
A running program uses two regions of memory to store data: the stack and the heap .
The Stack
The system takes care of all stack manipulation. You, as the programmer, don't need to do
anything with it explicitly. But understanding its basic functions will give you a better under-
standing of what your program is doing when it is running, and allow you to better understand
the C# documentation and literature.
The stack is an array of memory that acts as a last-in, first-out (LIFO) data structure. It
stores several types of data:
￿
The values of certain types of variables
￿
The program's current execution environment
￿
Parameters passed to methods
Facts About Stacks
The following are additional facts you should know about stacks:
￿
Data can only be added to and deleted from the top of the stack.
￿
Placing a data item at the top of the stack is called pushing the item onto the stack.
￿
Deleting an item from the top of the stack is called popping the item from the stack.
Figure 3-6 illustrates the functions and terminology of the stack.
Figure 3-6. Pushing and popping on the system stack
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