What's wrong with alloca() ?

preston@dawn.cs.rice.edu (Preston Briggs)
Thu, 19 Dec 1991 22:48:47 GMT

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Newsgroups: comp.compilers
From: preston@dawn.cs.rice.edu (Preston Briggs)
Summary: why is use of alloca() deprecated?
Keywords: C, storage
Organization: Rice University, Houston
Date: Thu, 19 Dec 1991 22:48:47 GMT

After reading many man pages and talking to several friends, I get the
feeling that alloca() is becoming unpopular, and in some case unsupported.


Why is this happening? I like it. It's a fast alternative to malloc in
many common situations. In particular, it allows quick deallocation.
It's not difficult to support, though it may cost an extra register.


Support efficient memory management! Require alloca in your next C compiler.


Preston Briggs
[It is my impression that there are environments where you can't reliably
implement alloca. On non-Unix systems, you can't count on there being a
big pool of space just beyond the stack frame, frames may be a linked list
in random places around the address space. I do agree that something like it
is nice to have around. -John]
--

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