Pop

Removing an item from a stack is called a pop operation. In the real-world analogy an item is actually removed: a dish is physically moved from the stack. In a software stack, "removal" of an item means it is copied to another location and the stack pointer is adjusted.

The picture shows a pop operation. The data is first copied from the top of stack to the new location and then the stack pointer is increased by four.

To pop the top item from a stack, copy the item pointed at by the stack pointer, then add 4 to the stack pointer.

Here is what that looks like in code. Say that we want the value to be popped into $t0:

                    # POP the item into $t0:
lw   $t0,($sp)      #   Copy top item to $t0.
addu $sp,$sp,4      #   Point to the item beneath the old top.

As above, ($sp) means the same as 0($sp).