In computer engineering and in programming language implementations, a stack machine is a real or emulated computer that uses a pushdown stack rather than individual machine registers to evaluate each sub-expression in the program. A stack computer is programmed with a reverse Polish notation instruction set.
The common alternative to stack machines are register machines, in which each instruction explicitly names the specific registers to use for operand and result values.
Read more about Stack Machine: Practical Expression-Stack Machines, Computers Using Call Stacks and Stack Frames
Famous quotes containing the words stack and/or machine:
““Farewell to barn and stack and tree,
Farewell to Severn shore.
Terence, look your last at me,
For I come home no more.”
—A.E. (Alfred Edward)
“The momentary charge at Balaklava, in obedience to a blundering command, proving what a perfect machine the soldier is, has, properly enough, been celebrated by a poet laureate; but the steady, and for the most part successful, charge of this man, for some years, against the legions of Slavery, in obedience to an infinitely higher command, is as much more memorable than that as an intelligent and conscientious man is superior to a machine. Do you think that that will go unsung?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)