What is alloca()? [Generated by bison from flex]

[Henry Spencer]

In article <3823.2518c141 at uwovax.uwo.ca> 2014_5001 at uwovax.uwo.ca writes:
>... What does alloca() do?
>It does not appear in the TurboC 2.0 library, nor in Unix SysV
>man pages.

It's a nonstandard botch (originating in some poorly-designed ancient Unix
systems) that some of the Gnoids are really fond of.  The theory is that
it's malloc() except that the storage automatically goes away when you leave
the function it was called in.  This is more than a little difficult to
implement on some machines...
-- 
"Where is D.D. Harriman now,   |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
when we really *need* him?"    | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry at zoo.toronto.edu