Re: What's wrong with alloca() in gcc????

> At least at one time, the dynamic array stuff in gcc was very broken
> in that if you have
>
> int foo[z];
>
> sizeof(foo) returned sizeof(int).




If one is too conservative with regards to enhancing a language or its
library, then the language may well die. Dynamic arrays seems to me to be
safer and more reliable (in software engineering terms) than alloca(). By
this I mean that system supplied routines/methods only require one
person/company to get things right, while the do-it-all-yourself way
requires that hundreds if not thousands of programmers find out how to do
things the right way. The way things usually are, most will fail simply
because they will not know enough.


Example: Even such a simple thing as comparing two characters is fraught
with dangers in an 8-bit world. Ascii order is not necessarily sorting
order and different nationalities may sort differently.




Greetings,
      Tarjei T. Jensen
--
// Tarjei T. Jensen
// tarjeij@ulrik.uio.no || +47 4 563411
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