what's on the stack when a function is called?

Question

I can only imagine 1) parameters; 2) local variables;

what else?

1) function return address? 2) function name?

Answer 1

It really depends on platform and architecture, but typically:

• Function return address
• Saved values of caller's CPU registers - most importantly, caller's stack frame pointer value
• Variables allocated with alloca().
• Sometimes - extra stuff for exception handling, this is VERY platform-dependent.
• Sometimes - guard values to detect stack clobbering

Function name is never in the stack, to the best of my knowledge, unless your code places it there.