Reaching beyond the top of the stack -- illegal or just bad style?

The stack pointer, esp on i386, denotes the top of the stack. All memory below the stack pointer (i.e. higher addresses) is occupied by parameters, variables and return addresses; memory above the stack pointer must be assumed to contain garbage. When programming in assembly, it is equally easy to use memory below and above the stack pointer. Reading from or writing to addresses beyond the top of the stack is unusual and under normal circumstances, there is little reason to do so. Continue »