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From: Tim Rentsch <tr.17687@z991.linuxsc.com>
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Stacks, was Segments
Date: Mon, 27 Jan 2025 17:26:51 -0800
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Niklas Holsti <niklas.holsti@tidorum.invalid> writes:

> On 2025-01-18 5:08, John Levine wrote:
>
>> According to MitchAlsup1 <mitchalsup@aol.com>:
>>
>>>> Stacks are small because OS people make them small, not because of
>>>> a valid technical reason that has ever been explained to me.
>>>> "To avoid infinite recursion" is not a valid reason, IMHO.
>>>
>>> Algol 60 only had stack allocation for dynamically sized arrays,
>>> so stacks had to be as big as the data are.
>>
>> Huh?  Algol 60 routines could be mutually recursive so unless it was
>> a leaf procedure or the outer block, everything not declared "own"
>> went on the stack.
>
> Mitch's point AIUI was that Algol 60 had no heap allocation (and no
> explicit pointer types), so indeed all data were either on the stack
> or statically allocated.
>
> I'm not an English native speaker, but it seems to me that Mitch
> should have written "Algol 60 had only stack allocation" instead of
> "Algol 60 only had stack allocation".

Yes.  I have seen this situation described as a rule for "only" to
be put as late in the sentence as still make sense.

Putting on my editor hat, I would recommend revising the sentence
more thoroughly, as for example, "Algol 60 had no way of allocating
memory except by means local variables on the stack" (assuming that
is the case;  my memories of the rules of Algol may have undetected
ECC errors).