stack

I tried to help an OP on this question . I found out that a code like the one below causes segmentation fault randomly even if the stack is set to 2000 Kbytes. int main () { int a[510000]; a[509999] = 1; printf("%d", a[509999]); return 0; } As you can see the array is 510000 x 4 bytes = 2040000 bytes. The stack is set to 2000 Kbytes (2048000 bytes) using ulimit command: ulimit -s 2000 ulimit -Ss 2000 Based on those numbers the application has room to store the array, but randomly it return segmentation fault. Any ideas? There's a few reasons why you can't do this. There are things that are

Won't the processor cause a TRAP to the operating system if the stack size limit is reached(thus preventing a stackoverflow :P) I believe Windows does have a stack that grows when you reach the end. In the Visual Studio compiler the code responsible for this is in the chkstk.obj module. Since this code is open-source I can post it here: ;*** ;_chkstk - check stack upon procedure entry ; ;Purpose: ; Provide stack checking on procedure entry. Method is to simply probe ; each page of memory required for the stack in descending order. This ; causes the necessary pages of memory to be allocated via

I get this weird backtrace (sometimes): (gdb) bt #0 0x00002b36465a5d4c in AY16_Loop_M16 () from /opt/intel/mkl/10.0.3.020/lib/em64t/libmkl_mc.so #1 0x00000000000021da in ?? () #2 0x00000000000021da in ?? () #3 0xbf3e9dec2f04aeff in ?? () #4 0xbf480541bd29306a in ?? () #5 0xbf3e6017955273e8 in ?? () #6 0xbf442b937c2c1f37 in ?? () #7 0x3f5580165832d744 in ?? () ... Any ideas why i cant see the symbols? Compiled with debugging syms of course. The same session gives symbols at other points. The AY16_Loop_M16() in libmkl_mc.so most likely was written in assembly, and does not have correct unwind

When I'm on SO I read a lot of comments guiding (Especially in C) "dynamic allocation allways goes to the heap, automatic allocation on the stack" But especially regarding to plain C I disaggree with that. As the ISO/IEC9899 doesn't even drop a word of heap or stack. It just mentions three storage duriations (static, automatic, and allocated) and advises how each of them has to be treat. What would give a compiler the option to do it even wise versa if it would like to. So my question is: Are the heap and the stack physical existing that (even if not in C) a standardized language can say "...