From: <dan...@ya...> - 2001-01-30 18:35:33
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--- Earnie Boyd <ear...@ya...> wrote: > Ok, so what do we all think about this patch (I've attached it for > convenience). I know Danny Smith had comments with a follow up by > ts1 > but how about others? > There was a long discussion on alloca on comp.compilers awhile back (maybe 1991) Search for "Whats wrong with alloca()". In it, IIRC, there is comment to this effect: Doug Gwyn wrote the alloca() that ended up in BSD library implementation. He has stated publicly that he regrets having released it because it encourages people to continue using alloca(). Danny _____________________________________________________________________________ http://cars.yahoo.com.au/ - Yahoo! Cars - Buy, sell or finance a car.. |
From: Mumit K. <khan@NanoTech.Wisc.EDU> - 2001-01-31 03:41:42
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On Wed, 31 Jan 2001, Danny Smith wrote: > > There was a long discussion on alloca on comp.compilers awhile back > (maybe 1991) Search for "Whats wrong with alloca()". In it, IIRC, > there is comment to this effect: Yeah, I remember Doug Gywn's opinion on this, and I for one agree. However, I don't like restricting users from shooting themselves in any body part of their choice, so let them use it. Also, note that GCC's builtin alloca works very well on a wide variety of platforms. Any code that uses alloca doesn't get checked into our repository, which shows my personal bias. As far as GCC is concerned, if it sees alloca in your code, it'll automatically use builtin_alloca (there are exceptions) unless you use -fno-builtins. That's why I'm cautious about any patch that redefined alloca, without a thorough review as to the rationale. The symbol conflict I mentioned has to do with a goof many years ago in libgcc.a, the gcc C support library, where there is a global called _alloca, which conflicts with MSVC's one. I'm about to change that for gcc3 branch. I have to dig up my old messages regarding this with a few mingw users from zillions of moons ago to refresh my failing memory. Regards, Mumit |