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From: gwyn@BRL.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.emacs
Subject: Re:  gnu design question
Message-ID: <22@cornell.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 30-Dec-85 09:54:36 EST
Article-I.D.: cornell.22
Posted: Mon Dec 30 09:54:36 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 31-Dec-85 03:58:31 EST
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Organization: Cornell Univ. CS Dept.
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From: Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn@BRL.ARPA>

Alloca() is definitely not portable, and Dennis Ritchie even tried
to suppress it altogether in 7th Edition UNIX (obviously not fully
successfully).  Except for the action of longjmp(), alloca() does
nothing that malloc()/free() would not do.  I don't understand why
GNU EMACS wants to use setjmp() and alloca() so heavily; in the
over 500,000 lines of source code that I maintain, there is not a
single use of alloca(), and only a few places where it could have
been used effectively if available.