When a routine is declared within the scope of a procedure or function, it is said to be nested. In
this case, an additional invisible parameter is passed to the nested routine. This additional
parameter is the frame pointer address of the parent routine. This permits the nested routine to
access the local variables and parameters of the calling routine.
The resulting stack frame after the entry code of a simple nested procedure has been executed is
shown in table (6.4).
| Table 6.4: | Stack frame when calling a nested procedure (32-bit processors) |
|
| | O set from frame pointer | What is stored |
|
| | +x | parameters |
| +8 | Frame pointer of parent routine |
| +4 | Return address |
| +0 | Saved frame pointer |
|
| | |
|