[about alloca vs malloc]
If you allocate with malloc and then accidentally overwrite it, you get a
corrupted heap.
If you allocate with alloca and then accidentally overwrite it, you get a
corrupted stack.
Guess which is easier to notice :-)
Besides, alloca is a GCC builtin (IIRC), so you you don't have to worry
about its implementation (the GCC folks do :). As long as you have the
stack to allocate from, it's as transparent as declaring automatic arrays
with variable length. e.g.
p = alloca( strlen(s) );
is almost the same as
char a[ strlen(s) ], p=a;
/* this is a legal GCC extension */
--
Csaba Ráduly, Software Engineer Sophos Anti-Virus
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.sophos.com
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