[tropo]

C currently replaces my use of an array with a pointer. This sucks, because I'd have taken the address if I wanted that.

Your proposal replaces my use of an array with two things, a pointer (as before) and a length. This is not too helpful, because I already could have done that if I'd wanted to.

What is missing is the ability to pass an array. Sometimes I want to toss a few megabytes on the stack. Don't stop me. I should be able to do that. The called function then has a copy of the original array that it can modify without mangling the original array in the caller.

[WalterBright]

> Your proposal replaces my use of an array with two things, a pointer (as before) and a length. This is not too helpful, because I already could have done that if I'd wanted to.

C doesn't have a reasonable way of doing that. I know my proposal works, because we've been using it in D for 20 years.

[tropo]

Your proposal does not work, at least when making the declarations binary compatible with older code.

Note that C is a pass-by-value language, so passing an array means that the called function can modify the content without the modifications being seen in the caller.

To sort of pass arrays in an ABI-compatible way, the version for older code would require putting the array inside a struct.

Even that doesn't fully work with any ABI that I've ever heard of. The struct doesn't really get passed. Disassemble the code if you have doubts. The caller allocates space for the struct, copies the struct there, and then passes a pointer to the struct. From the high-level view of the language, this is passing the struct, but the low level details are actually wrong.