unwind the stack

During the execution of a procedural language, one is said

to "unwind the stack" from a called procedure up to a caller

when one discards the stack frame and any number of frames

above it, popping back up to the level of the given caller.

In C this is done with "longjmp"/"setjmp", in Lisp

with "throw/catch". See also smash the stack.

[Jargon File]