Patent ID: 7080368

Claim:
An apparatus comprising: at least one processor; a memory coupled to the at least one processor; an object oriented program residing in the memory and executed by the at least one processor; an invocation stack residing in the memory, the invocation stack including a real stack frame that is created as a result of invoking a method in the object oriented program, wherein the real stack frame includes information corresponding to at least one method in the object oriented program that has been inlined into another method; and a virtual stack frame mechanism residing in the memory and executed by the at least one processor, the virtual stack frame mechanism returning correct information about the invocation stack for a called method that has corresponding information stored on the invocation stack, wherein the virtual stack frame mechanism comprises an object oriented class that counts both virtual and real stack frames when traversing the invocation stack, wherein each real stack frame may include a plurality of virtual stack frames, and wherein each virtual stack frame corresponds to an inlined method.