[thisoneisreal]

I've been looking into Ada recently and it has cool safety mechanisms to encourage this same kind of thing. It even allows you to dynamically allocate on the stack for many cases.

[apaprocki]

You can allocate dynamically on the stack in C as well. Every compiler will give you some form of alloca().

[adrian_b]

True, but in many environments where C is used the stacks may be configured with small sizes and without the possibility of being grown dynamically.

In such environments, it may be needed to estimate the maximum stack usage and configure big enough stacks, if possible.

Having to estimate maximum memory usage is the same constraint when allocating a static array as a work area, then using a custom allocator to provide memory when needed.

[lelanthran]

> You can allocate dynamically on the stack in C as well. Every compiler will give you some form of alloca().

And if it doesn't, VLAs are still in there until C23, IIRC.