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From: joey@tessi.UUCP (Joe Pruett)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: of course!
Message-ID: <563@balthmus.tessi.UUCP>
Date: 8 Dec 89 01:09:31 GMT
References: <152@norsat.UUCP> <2586@unisoft.UUCP> <15769@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <17264@rpp386.cactus.org> <4526@ski.cs.vu.nl> <17303@rpp386.cactus.org> <1051@root44.co.uk> <1989Nov22.224209.28911@athena.mit.edu> <128791@sun.Eng.Sun.COM>
Reply-To: joey@tessi.UUCP (Joe Pruett)
Organization: TSSI, Beaverton, Oregon
Lines: 23

I know this is a GNU-ism, but local variable sized arrays seem
like the best of all worlds.  For example:

isadir(path)
char *path;
{
	char tpath[strlen(path) + 3];

	strcpy(tpath, path);
	strcat(tpath, "/.");
	.
	.
	.
}

It is fairly quick, only uses as much memory as is necessary, and
the storage automatically goes away at the end of the function.
This is one of the best additions to C that I've seen.  It's intuitive,
let's the compiler do the yucky work (alloca is a hack), and add's
a very useful feature.

Yes, 3 should be calculated instead of a constant, but I gotta
have something for people to complain about... :-)