Hi,
I am trying to declare a 3D array with the size of 6,400 and 400 in each dimension using the code as following:
but actually it introduced a run time error "stack overflow" after surviving the compilation.So what's wrong with this code and how to fulfil my mission rightly?Thank u in advance.I use VS 2005 if it makes any difference.

In VS2005 a "short" is 16 bits long, so this array requires 1,920,000 bytes in memory.

In just about all implementations (and certainly for VS2005) variables declared like this are allocated storage on a stack. See Footnote.

The total default stack size for Microsoft 32-bit compilers is usually something like a Megabyte, so this won't work. To tell the compiler/linker to use a larger stack see, for example, Visual C++: Set Stack Size

One "easy" solution that doesn't require a large stack size is to declare the array to be static.
Static variables are allocated storage on the 'heap' and the array is stored in memory obtained from the operating system when the program is loaded. Microsoft compilers usually have a heap limit something like two Gigabytes, so it should work.

Now, "easy" is sometimes "best" and sometimes not. For example, if you had several functions that allocated the storage for local use within the function, "static" is probably not the way to go. For this compiler you can make the stack size larger. An alternative would be to use dynamic allocation. On the other hand, if you just have one fixed-size array in your program, a default stack size and a "static" array may very well be practical.

Regards,

Dave

Footnote: Things they don't always tell you in beginning programming class: If your program is going to need more than a few hundred K bytes of storage for variables, consider using dynamic array allocation (using new for C++ and malloc() or calloc() for C programs). Sometimes static storage will work, and I think it will for your problem, but the bottom line is that it is the programmer's responsibility to be aware of the program's resource requirements.