🚀 go-pugleaf

I'm curious why (it seems like) all the gnu products seem to insist upon
using the alloca() function?  I was under the impression that it was
generally considered a vile, disgusting function and was generally
considered bad form to use it.

Case in point.  I recently ported gdbm1.1 to System V R3.2.  The source
initially used alloca() in several places.  In doing so, it required me
to link in an additional library, that wouldn't obviously needed
normally.

With a little careful study, I was able to replace all occurrences of
alloca() with calls to malloc() and free().  This process took perhaps
an hour.  Why couldn't the original programmer have done this, and
created a much more portable program?

Thank you for your indulgence.
-- 
Eric Schnoebelen		eric@cirr.com		 schnoebe@convex.com
	Real Programmers never work 9 to 5.  If any real programmers
	    are around at 9am it's because they were up all night.