Why is the use of alloca() not considered good practice?

Question

alloca() allocates memory on the stack rather than on the heap, as in the case of malloc(). So, when I return from the routine the memory is freed.

Answer 1

In my opinion, alloca(), where available, should be used only in a constrained manner. Very much like the use of "goto", quite a large number of otherwise reasonable people have strong aversion not just to the use of, but also the existence of, alloca().

For embedded use, where the stack size is known and limits can be imposed via convention and analysis on the size of the allocation, and where the compiler cannot be upgraded to support C99+, use of alloca() is fine, and I've been known to use it.

When available, VLAs may have some advantages over alloca(): The compiler can generate stack limit checks that will catch out-of-bounds access when array style access is used (I don't know if any compilers do this, but it can be done), and analysis of the code can determine whether the array access expressions are properly bounded. Note that, in some programming environments, such as automotive, medical equipment, and avionics, this analysis has to be done even for fixed size arrays, both automatic (on the stack) and static allocation (global or local).

On architectures that store both data and return addresses/frame pointers on the stack (from what I know, that's all of them), any stack allocated variable can be dangerous because the address of the variable can be taken, and unchecked input values might permit all sorts of mischief.

Portability is less of a concern in the embedded space, however it is a good argument against use of alloca() outside of carefully controlled circumstances.

Outside of the embedded space, I've used alloca() mostly inside logging and formatting functions for efficiency, and in a non-recursive lexical scanner, where temporary structures (allocated using alloca() are created during tokenization and classification, then a persistent object (allocated via malloc()) is populated before the function returns. The use of alloca() for the smaller temporary structures greatly reduces fragmentation when the persistent object is allocated.