[General Abe]

A stock is a function which can be used for repetitive operations (i.e. strtok, sscanf). Stocks can't be called, they don't have to be forwarded, they can return multiple values, they don't print warnings in the compiler if you don't use them, they're only included in the compiled .amx if you do use them.

As they can't be called by timers, etc. their best use is for returning values of any sort... and if you want a used-to-hell example of a stock, just look at strtok (for commands).