Stack-related terms

There is a l开发者_如何学编程ot of use of "up/down the stack" and similar terminology on this site.

What do the following mean?

• Tear down the stack (in an exception)
• At the top of the stack (this must where the recent method calls are, as that is the order of the stack when I see them in .NET exceptions) (Thus, bottom of the stack is vice versa)

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A lot of it depends on context. "Up" and "Down" tend to be used rather interchangably - for example, "tearing down" the stack in the case of an exception basically means taking off all the method calls until the relevant catch block is reached, while an exception "propagating up" the stack means pretty much the same thing.