The pep/8 memory tracer
J. Stanley Warford, Chris Dimpfl · 2010
This paper presents a virtual machine simulator with a memory trace facility having two unique features. First, the machine is designed to illustrate the translation from C/C++ to assembly language and from thence to machine language. Instead of the more common memory dump labeled by address, the tracer displays a graphic representation of the cell labeled by its symbol. Second, the simulator displays in real time the growth of the run-time stack on function activation, detects and displays the boundaries of the activation record, and displays all the cells on the run-time stack labeled by symbol. The paper includes download information for the open-source application.