How does gcc decides how much memory allocate for stack and why does it not decrement %rsp anymore when I remove printf()
(or any function call) from my main?
1. I noticed when I played around with a code sample: https://godbolt.org/z/fQqkNE that the 6th line
in gcc assembly viewer subq $48, %rsp
gets removed if I remove printf()
from my C
code on line 22
. It looks like when I don’t make any function calls from within my main, then the %rsp
does not get decremented, but data still gets allocated based on %rbp
and offsets. I thought %rsp
changes only when stack grows. My theory is that since it won’t make any other function calls, it knows that it won’t need to keep stack for other nonexistent functions. But shouldn’t %rsp
still grow as data is getting saved?
2. When adding variables to my rect struct
, I also noticed that it sometimes allocates memory in steps greater than what the added data type size was. What is the convention it follows when deciding how much memory to allocate to stack?
3. Is there an online tool that would take assembly code as input, and then draw an image of stack and tell me state of every register at any point of execution? Godbolt.org is a very good tool, I just wish it had these 2 extra features.
I'll paste the code below in case the link to godbolt stops working in the future:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdint.h>
struct rect {
int a;
int b;
int* c;
int d[2];
uint8_t f;
};
int main() {
int arr[2] = {2, 3};
struct rect Rect;
Rect.a = 10;
Rect.b = 20;
Rect.c = arr;
Rect.d[0] = Rect.a;
Rect.d[1] = Rect.b;
Rect.f =255;
printf("%d and %d", Rect.a, Rect.b);
return 0;
}
.LC0:
.string "%d and %d"
main:
pushq %rbp
movq %rsp, %rbp
subq $48, %rsp
movl $2, -8(%rbp)
movl $3, -4(%rbp)
movl $10, -48(%rbp)
movl $20, -44(%rbp)
leaq -8(%rbp), %rax
movq %rax, -40(%rbp)
movl -48(%rbp), %eax
movl %eax, -32(%rbp)
movl -44(%rbp), %eax
movl %eax, -28(%rbp)
movb $-1, -24(%rbp)
movl -44(%rbp), %edx
movl -48(%rbp), %eax
movl %eax, %esi
movl $.LC0, %edi
movl $0, %eax
call printf
movl $0, %eax
leave
ret
P.S.: The book I follow uses AT&T syntax for teaching x86. Which is weird because it makes finding online tutorials much harder.