How to detect possible / potential stack overflow problems in a c / c++ program?

Question

Is there a standard way to see how much stack space your app has and what the highest watermark for stack usage is during a run?

Also in the dreaded case of actual overflow what happens?

Does it crash, trigger an exception or signal? Is there a standard or is it different on all systems and compilers?

I'm looking specifically for Windows, Linux and Macintosh.

Answer 1

On Windows a stack overflow exception will be generated.

The following windows code illustrates this:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <windows.h>

void StackOverFlow()
{
  CONTEXT context;

  // we are interested control registers
  context.ContextFlags = CONTEXT_CONTROL;

  // get the details
  GetThreadContext(GetCurrentThread(), &context);

  // print the stack pointer
  printf("Esp: %X\n", context.Esp);

  // this will eventually overflow the stack
  StackOverFlow();
}

DWORD ExceptionFilter(EXCEPTION_POINTERS *pointers, DWORD dwException)
{
  return EXCEPTION_EXECUTE_HANDLER;
}

void main()
{
  CONTEXT context;

  // we are interested control registers
  context.ContextFlags = CONTEXT_CONTROL;

  // get the details
  GetThreadContext(GetCurrentThread(), &context);

  // print the stack pointer
  printf("Esp: %X\n", context.Esp);

  __try
  {
    // cause a stack overflow
    StackOverFlow();
  }
  __except(ExceptionFilter(GetExceptionInformation(), GetExceptionCode()))
  {
    printf("\n****** ExceptionFilter fired ******\n");
  }
}

When this exe is run the following output is generated:

Esp: 12FC4C
Esp: 12F96C
Esp: 12F68C
.....
Esp: 33D8C
Esp: 33AAC
Esp: 337CC

****** ExceptionFilter fired ******