alloca (was Re: Are yacc parsers portable ?)

[Scott Wilson]

In article <62363 at sun.uucp> david at 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 at sun.com
Sun Microsystems	uucp: ...!sun!swilson
Mt. View, CA