Re: [PATCH 1/2] sideband.c: Use xmalloc() instead of variable-sized arrays.

From: Johannes Sixt <j.sixt@viscovery.net>
Date: Jan 9, 2008, 07:34 UTC
Message-ID: <4784791F.6090904@viscovery.net>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.LFD.1.00.0801081154460.3054@xanadu.home>

Nicolas Pitre schrieb:

Show 10 quoted lines

> On Tue, 8 Jan 2008, Johannes Sixt wrote:
>> How come we got along with this not very portable construct for so long?
>> Probably because the array sizes were computed from the results of
>> strlen() of string constants.
> 
> Maybe because it isn't not so unportable anymore?  I doubt that 
> compilers that don't know about automatic arrays would be smart enough 
> to notice the variable was actually a constant due to the strlen() of a 
> constant string and just do like if there wasn't any variable for the 
> array size.

I just tried it with Visual Age 6, and got this:

    CC sideband.o
"sideband.c", line 22.18: 1506-195 (S) Integral constant expression with a
value greater than zero is required.
"sideband.c", line 62.51: 1506-195 (S) Integral constant expression with a
value greater than zero is required.
make: *** [sideband.o] Error 1

But before I got to this point I had to change all 'static inline' in git-compat-util.h to plain 'static'. So this compiler is out of the game anyway.

Having said that, I'd actually prefer to stay with variable-sized arrays if they prove portable enough because we don't need the handful of free()s on function exits. Junio, if you like I can resend patch 2/2 using variable-sized arrays.

-- Hannes