Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!oliveb!sun!thetone!swilson
From: swilson%thetone@Sun.COM (Scott Wilson)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: alloca (was Re: Are yacc parsers portable ?)
Message-ID: <62412@sun.uucp>
Date: 2 Aug 88 15:18:40 GMT
References: <3950010@eecs.nwu.edu> <62170@sun.uucp> <62363@sun.uucp>
Sender: news@sun.uucp
Reply-To: swilson@sun.UUCP (Scott Wilson)
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mountain View
Lines: 16

In article <62363@sun.uucp> david@sun.uucp (David DiGiacomo) writes:
>By distributing excellent software which makes good use of
>alloca, they are ensuring that all self-respecting C compiler/library
>vendors will provide an efficient implementation of it.

If alloca is such a wonderful function (and I'm NOT saying it isn't)
then why isn't it part of the ANSI draft proposed standard libraries
for C?  Are you saying that a "self-respecting" C compiler/library
vendor will be doing users a disservice by providing only ANSI memory
routines (malloc, calloc, realloc, and free)?  I would argue that it
is better to conform to a standard even with its shortcomings than
attempt to make something universal by "forcing" it on  everyone.

--
Scott Wilson		arpa: swilson@sun.com
Sun Microsystems	uucp: ...!sun!swilson
Mt. View, CA