>> (2) C, as well as many other PLs, has always had a problem in >> that there is no clean, standard mechanism to handle the >> situation in which a function invocation finds insufficient >> stack remaining to complete the linkage (instance allocation). >> This is especially problematic in memory-constrained apps such >> as many embedded systems, when the algorithm is sufficiently >> dynamic that it is impossible to predict the maximum nesting >> depth. At least with malloc failure, the program is informed >> when there is a problem and can take measures to cope with it. >> >> I hope people working on run-time environments will find ways >> to do better.
FORTRAN never had this problem. Its memory needs were fixed at compile time. Neither did COBOL. But then again, you couldn't write recursive programs either; all locals were static storage class. The trade off to get recursion has been worth it and doesn't cause problems actual use. It wasn't a problem with Algol, PL/1, Pascal, and C programs on very small machines. Why should it be a problem with today's memory sizes? Brantley
