Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cbmvax!cbmehq!cbmdeo!lenler!moria!bojsen
From: bojsen@moria.UUCP (Per Bojsen)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.programmer
Subject: Re: AmigaGCC stack hogging
Keywords: GNU, alloca(), regex.c, alloca.c, gcc, g++
Message-ID: <18887df5.ARN1ad7@moria.UUCP>
Date: 16 Jan 91 19:52:05 GMT
References: <1882f287.ARN1979@moria.UUCP> <1991Jan14.212254.9779@csun.edu>
Reply-To: bojsen@moria.UUCP
Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.programmer
Organization: IDUN-Soft Aps.
Lines: 27

In article <1991Jan14.212254.9779@csun.edu>, Stephen Walton writes:

> In article <1882f287.ARN1979@moria.UUCP>, bojsen@moria (Per Bojsen) writes:
>
> >What is the precise reason for the large stack needs of GCC?
>
> This is not peculiar to GCC.  All of the GNU software is written as if
> the amount of available stack was essentially infinite.  The GNU regular
> expression routines, for instance, use alloca() extensively.
>
As I pointed out in my previous article, along with the GNU sed, flex, diff,
and gawk Amiga ports followed a version of alloca() that does _not_ allocate
on the stack, _but_ uses malloc()!  The other day I just checked, and this
alloca.c module is also included with the gcc-1.37.1 distribution.

Using this special version of alloca() should make it possible to reduce
the stack needs of the GNU utilities substantially, so my question stands:
does the Amiga ports of gcc use this non-stack-allocating alloca(), or do
they allocate _on_ the stack?

--
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|  Greetings from Per Bojsen.                                                  |
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