alloca(), #if, and other controversial things...

[Steven Ryan]

Just to keep this fight going.....

I grew up with Algol 60, where dynamic bounds on arrays provide the
equivalent of alloca(). I assumed Pascal's nonsense was something
everybody would recognise as stupid and the next group would take care
of.

Oh, well.

I couldn't care less about losing one register just to get back dynamic
arrays. (While heap storage includes local storage, heaps are almost
always slower; using an indirect address instead of a stack base+offset
screws up the optimiser; remember to release everything at the end
screws up the programmer. Local storage is a no-fuss, no-bother, no-problem
solution to a need I have in near most every program I write.)