[vlc-devel] [PATCH 05/12] Replace variable-length arrays by calls to alloca() for C90 compliance.

[Luca Barbato]

On 02/12/13 10:45, Felix Abecassis wrote:
>> alloca() is _not_ in C11, and is not supported by all _conforming_ compilers.
> You are right, but we might achieve better portability by using
> alloca() instead of VLAs; even if it is not standard.

>> Worst yet, alloca() does not an equivalent or a superset of VLAs functionally
>> speaking.
> 
>> And relatively speaking, alloca() is far worse than VLAs.
> Could you elaborate on that? Why is it worse than VLAs?
> 

Alloca and VLAs are a terrible idea to use in anything that should be
robust since it is by itself an undefined behaviour (crash) waiting to
happen at the worst time.

lu