🚀 go-pugleaf

I think I mentioned using alloca() on this newsgroup before, and received 
quite a lot of mail telling me that it was nonstandard, nonportable, and 
that use of it was generally heinous. :)

The problem is, it's so useful. There's a lot of cases when I write 
programs when I allocate a variable-sized buffer at the beginning of a 
function. If I use malloc(), I have to remember to free it at the end. 
This means that if the function exits prematurely, I have to either put 
the code to free the buffer in twice, or else use a goto. And if I 
forget, I get a memory leak. alloca() would handily fix this problem. 
There are other examples.

My question is, is there a legal alloca() I can use anywhere? Every 
system I've met so far has one, but that's no guarantee that other Unix 
systems will (my programs are Unix-specific). I've seen a more advanced 
alloca.c that is distributed with some programs, particularly some GNU 
ones. How about this one?

I'd really like to be able to use this function. Can I?

Thanks.


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