Re: Variable length arrays proposal

Randy Howard wrote:

On Wed, 29 Jun 2005 11:29:03 -0500, jacob navia wrote
(in article <42c2cc50$0$1217$8fcfb975@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>):


Proposal:

Allow the following syntax:

	typedef struct {
		int length;
		char data[length];
	} String;
This would indicate to the compiler that the "data" array
will have the length indicated by the "length" member. This
would allow to easily write code that automatically writes the
structure to disk, and allow that the compiler generates code
to check for index errors when accessing the "data" array.

Constraints:

The index should be a structure member of integer type.


Along with the other comments, even if it went through, the index should be size_t, not int.

I see no reason that length couldn't be any signed or unsigned integer type. We aren't constrained to only have index expressions of type size_t.

That said, I think the proposal goes beyond the spirit of C.

Thad

.

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