Determining Stack Space with Visual Studio

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Windows does not commit the stack memory immediately; instead, it reserves the address space for it, and commits it page-by-page when it is accessed. Read this page for more info.

As a result, stack address space consists of three contiguous regions:

  • Reserved but uncommitted memory which can be used for stack growth (but was never accessed yet);
  • Guard page, which was never accessed yet too, and serves to trigger stack growth when accessed;
  • Committed memory, i.e. stack memory which was ever accessed by the thread.

This allows us to construct a function that obtains stack size (with page size granularity):

static size_t GetStackUsage()
{
    MEMORY_BASIC_INFORMATION mbi;
    VirtualQuery(&mbi, &mbi, sizeof(mbi));
    // now mbi.AllocationBase = reserved stack memory base address

    VirtualQuery(mbi.AllocationBase, &mbi, sizeof(mbi));
    // now (mbi.BaseAddress, mbi.RegionSize) describe reserved (uncommitted) portion of the stack
    // skip it

    VirtualQuery((char*)mbi.BaseAddress + mbi.RegionSize, &mbi, sizeof(mbi));
    // now (mbi.BaseAddress, mbi.RegionSize) describe the guard page
    // skip it

    VirtualQuery((char*)mbi.BaseAddress + mbi.RegionSize, &mbi, sizeof(mbi));
    // now (mbi.BaseAddress, mbi.RegionSize) describe the committed (i.e. accessed) portion of the stack

    return mbi.RegionSize;
}

One thing to consider: CreateThread allows to specify initial stack commit size (via dwStackSize parameter, when STACK_SIZE_PARAM_IS_A_RESERVATION flag is not set). If this parameter is nonzero, our function will return correct value only when stack usage becomes greater than dwStackSize value.

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