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From: thomps@gitpyr.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Re: Minix and compiler models
Message-ID: <3036@gitpyr.gatech.EDU>
Date: Thu, 5-Feb-87 07:31:52 EST
Article-I.D.: gitpyr.3036
Posted: Thu Feb  5 07:31:52 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 7-Feb-87 11:40:01 EST
References: <966@ulowell.cs.ulowell.edu> <1565@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu> <383@dayton.UUCP>
Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology
Lines: 25
Summary: Not so. Stacks often grow down

In article <383@dayton.UUCP>, joe@dayton.UUCP (Joseph P. Larson) writes:
> In article <3021@gitpyr.gatech.EDU> thomps@gitpyr.gatech.EDU (Ken Thompson) writes:
> >with data starting at the bottom and growing up and the stack at the top
> >and growing down (I think. I don't have the book handy as I write this)
> 
> I always thought stacks grew up.  I think (and hope!) that you've got the
> two reversed!  ("Where, or where have the standards gone?  Where, oh where
> may they be?")

While it may seem counter intuitive, the computer world is full of stacks 
which grow down. This is the case with the 8086/8088 so that my above 
statement turns out to be correct. My experience has been that stacks 
grow in whichever direction happens to be convenient to the designer and
implementer of the stack. The fact that the stacjk is inverted does not
affect the paradigm at all. It is still a LIFO structure.

The stack also grows downward on an Intel 8080 and Motorolla 6800, two
early microcomputers so I hardly think that the direction stacks grow
in memory is standardized.

-- 
Ken Thompson  Phone : (404) 894-7089
Georgia Tech Research Institute
Georgia Insitute of Technology, Atlanta Georgia, 30332
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