Re: alloca (fwd)

[Jeff Garzik <jgarzik pobox com>]

On Thu, 21 Jan 1999, Elliot Lee wrote:
> The other macros (strdup_a, strconcat_a, etc.) are also non-intuitive to
> use - they don't (and, for glib's purposes, can't) follow the pattern of
> their malloc-using cousins.
> 
> Stack allocation needs to be done directly by the programmer, because it
> is a different beast than malloc. You're trying to generalize something
> that has enough differences from regular malloc to cause some real
> problems.

I think Tim's suggestion about the macro naming, g_alloca_strxxxxx,
provides enough of a distinction to make it obvious.

These convenience macros are optimizing for a highly common case: temp
string storage.  In addition, it frees the programmer from having to
worry about freeing the results. 

	Jeff