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The Dynamic Chain

• The collection of dynamic links in the stack at a given time is called the dynamic chain, or call chain

• Local variables can be accessed by their offset from the beginning of the activation record. This offset is called the local_offset

• The local_offset of a local variable can be determined by the compiler:
  • Assuming all stack positions are the same size, the first local variable declared has an offset of three plus the number of parameters

• The activation record used in the previous example supports recursion