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Stacks are temporary memory address spaces used to hold arguments and automatic variables over subprogram invocations. The default size of the main stack is about eight megabytes. Use the limit command to display the current main stack size as well as set it.
In Microsoft Windows 2000, if the Microsoft ASP.NET Worker Process (ASPNet_wp.exe) creates a thread, the maximum stack size of the thread is 1 MB. In Windows Server 2008 and higher, the maximum stack size of a thread running on 32-bit version of IIS is 256 KB, and on an x64 server is 512 KB.
Stacks are temporary memory address spaces used to hold arguments and automatic variables during invocation of a subprogram or function reference. In general, the default main stack size is 8 megabytes.
The stack area is typically 1 to 8Mb, and that's memory used by the compiler to store automatic variables (declared in functions), and function arguments. The heap is potentially all the remaining virtual memory space of your process, and what is used to allocate memory when using new or malloc.
In Visual Studio the default stack size is 1 MB i think, so with a recursion depth of 10,000 each stack frame can be at most ~100 bytes which should be sufficient for a DFS algorithm.
Most compilers including Visual Studio let you specify the stack size. On some (all?) linux flavours the stack size isn't part of the executable but an environment variable in the OS. You can then check the stack size with ulimit -s and set it to a new value with for example ulimit -s 16384.
Here's a link with default stack sizes for gcc.
DFS without recursion:
std::stack<Node> dfs;
dfs.push(start);
do {
Node top = dfs.top();
if (top is what we are looking for) {
break;
}
dfs.pop();
for (outgoing nodes from top) {
dfs.push(outgoing node);
}
} while (!dfs.empty())
Stacks for threads are often smaller. You can change the default at link time, or change at run time also. For reference, some defaults are:
Platform-dependent, toolchain-dependent, ulimit-dependent, parameter-dependent.... It is not at all specified, and there are many static and dynamic properties that can influence it.
Yes, there is a possibility of stack overflow. The C and C++ standard do not dictate things like stack depth, those are generally an environmental issue.
Most decent development environments and/or operating systems will let you tailor the stack size of a process, either at link or load time.
You should specify which OS and development environment you're using for more targeted assistance.
For example, under Ubuntu Karmic Koala, the default for gcc is 2M reserved and 4K committed but this can be changed when you link the program. Use the --stack option of ld to do that.
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