17.1 alloca

The alloca module provides for a function alloca which allocates memory on the stack, where the system allows it. A memory block allocated with alloca exists only until the function that calls alloca returns or exits abruptly.

There are a few systems where this is not possible: HP-UX systems, and some other platforms when the C++ compiler is used. On these platforms the alloca module provides a malloc based emulation. This emulation will not free a memory block immediately when the calling function returns, but rather will wait until the next alloca call from a function with the same or a shorter stack length. Thus, in some cases, a few memory blocks will be kept although they are not needed any more.

The user can #include <alloca.h> and use alloca on all platforms. Note that the #include <alloca.h> must be the first one after the autoconf-generated config.h, for AIX 3 compatibility. Thanks to IBM for this nice restriction!

Note that GCC 3.1 and 3.2 can inline functions that call alloca. When this happens, the memory blocks allocated with alloca will not be freed until the end of the calling function. If this calling function runs a loop calling the function that uses alloca, the program easily gets a stack overflow and crashes. To protect against this compiler behaviour, you can mark the function that uses alloca with the following attribute:

#ifdef __GNUC__
__attribute__ ((__noinline__))
#endif

An alternative to this module is the ‘alloca-opt’ module.