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I have taken programming classes before but never had I heard about a cryptic call stack. What is it?

user1496542
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    It's like this question, no-one knows what it means. – Aesthete Sep 10 '12 at 12:33
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    Me neither. Seems like just colloquial English for "call stack that's difficult to understand". – Magnus Hoff Sep 10 '12 at 12:34
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    Where did you hear about it? Provide the reference and take time to frame your question in clear and concise manner or this will get closed soon as not a real Q.Also, note that the C++ standard doesn't talk of any *cryptic callstack* as such. – Alok Save Sep 10 '12 at 12:34
  • Maybe a call stack that resulted from heavy inlining and optimizations? Or one that's been smashed? – Kerrek SB Sep 10 '12 at 12:34
  • My boss mentioned it at work... was wondering if any of you guys could help because I tried googling but it seems nothing has been of much help.. – user1496542 Sep 10 '12 at 12:35
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    You should ask your boss what does he mean exactly when he says *cryptic callstack*, You can just say it is not a standard term and So you are not aware of it. – Alok Save Sep 10 '12 at 12:37
  • I think your boss was just trying to say that the call stack made it difficult to decipher what was going on in the application, it's not a technical term. An _equivocally abstruse callstack_ on the other hand.. – Aesthete Sep 10 '12 at 12:37
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    Alrighty. I shall do that. Was gonna explore the interwebs at first before I asked him since I'm kind of new but now that many of you say it's not an actual technical term, I suppose googling will just waste my time. thanks. – user1496542 Sep 10 '12 at 12:41

1 Answers1

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I'm assuming it's referring to a call stack that is outside of your code or where stack frames are missing. Breaking execution in a thread operated by the OS (ntdll.dll anyone?), or a crash resulting from undefined behavior (that happens outside your code) can lead to call stacks that you usually can't make sense of.

Luchian Grigore
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