Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!yale!cmcl2!adm!smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@smoke.brl.mil (Doug Gwyn)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: scope of malloc
Keywords: alloca
Message-ID: <14461@smoke.brl.mil>
Date: 14 Nov 90 15:59:27 GMT
References: <3739@skye.ed.ac.uk> <14448@smoke.brl.mil> <650@metaware.metaware.com>
Organization: U.S. Army Ballistic Research Laboratory, APG, MD.
Lines: 9

In article <650@metaware.metaware.com> fjb@metaware.UUCP (Fred Bourgeois) writes:
>Our compiler implements alloca() as an intrinsic, and does it correctly.
>... even on the 370 ...

The argument in X3J11 was that in some environments you'd have to pay a
speed penalty in non-alloca() code in order to have full support for alloca(),
a trade-off that few implementors would be willing to make (considering that
the vast majority of commercially important C code makes no use whatever of
alloca()).