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From: Keith Thompson <kst-u@mib.org>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Recursion or loop, design questions
Date: Fri, 10 Jul 2015 13:30:43 -0700
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ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) writes:
> Keith Thompson <kst-u@mib.org> writes:
>>Are there practical cases where a stack *overflow* can cause problems
>>other than terminating the program?
>
>       »stack overflow does not necessarily have to result
>       in a crash with a nice error message, but might also
>       overwrite non-stack parts of the memory (possibly
>       putting the address of virus code there)«
>
>   n1637

n1637, http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/www/docs/n1637.pdf, is
titled "Subtleties of the ANSI/ISO C standard".

I'm aware that the the behavior of stack overflow is not defined by the
C standard.  That passage suggests that it can behave in ways other than
terminating the program, but it offers no concrete examples.

My question is, how likely is it *in practice* for a stack overflow to
fail to be detected, and to result in something other than program
termination?

-- 
Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) kst-u@mib.org  <http://www.ghoti.net/~kst>
Working, but not speaking, for JetHead Development, Inc.
"We must do something.  This is something.  Therefore, we must do this."
    -- Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn, "Yes Minister"