From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz@delorie.com>
To: nsd@redhat.com
Cc: gdb@sources.redhat.com
Subject: Re: [RFA] alloca coding standard
Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2000 03:16:00 -0000
Message-id: <200011131116.GAA02191@indy.delorie.com>
References: <3A0CE1DB.6F6B1E93@cygnus.com> <200011130654.eAD6sjV16467@rtl.cygnus.com>
X-SW-Source: 2000-11/msg00119.html

> Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2000 01:54:45 -0500
> From: Nick Duffek <nsd@redhat.com>
>
> diff -up gdb/doc/gdbint.texinfo gdb/doc/gdbint.texinfo
> --- gdb/doc/gdbint.texinfo	Mon Nov 13 01:25:51 2000
> +++ gdb/doc/gdbint.texinfo	Mon Nov 13 01:25:15 2000
> @@ -2854,6 +2854,24 @@ visible to random source files.

I have a few minor comments (assuming that the idea is accepted and
this text will be added to gdbint.texinfo):

> +@subsection Alloca

I suggest an index entry here, e.g. "@findex alloca usage".  (Hmm, it
looks like gdbint.texinfo doesn't print an index right now.  I will fix
that.)

> +@code{alloca} may be used for allocating up to a page of stack memory
> +per function call.

I'd suggest to say how much is a "page", at least for a couple of
popular architectures.  Not everyone is privy to intimate details of
system's memory allocation.

> +garbage-collect freed space.  As of this writing, @value{GDBN} calls
> +@code{alloc (0)} once per user command and once per inferior wait.
         ^^^^^
This should be `alloca', not `alloc'.

Finally, perhaps something should be said about functions that could
potentially be called recursively, where care should be taken not to
overflow the runtime stack, even if each invocation asks a single
page.