VLA are poorly defined feature for which some implementations offer additional protection.
And I agree, automatic VLA aren't inherently a bad feature; it's just a poor feature of C99, C11, C17 and sadly still C23*.
I have faith we will be able to finally tackle it in C2y, but until then, I'm with Eskil in opinion ISO C would be better off without them all those years.
* Thank you for your work on N3121, hopefully we will vote it in during next meeting :)
I do not think VLA are anymore poorly defined then most other stuff in the C standard. It generally allows a wide range of implementations. As a language features, it is has excellent properties. (automatic life time and dynamic bounds).
Similar to UB and many other related issues, the main issues are primarily about what compilers do or not do. I have countless examples were C compiler could easily warn about issues or be more safe, but don't. Very similar to the arguments against VLAs there are people who want to throw the complete C language away. The story is always the same: Compilers do a poor job, but the language is blamed. Then programmers blame WG14 instead of complaining to their vendor. I do not see how VLAs are any different in this regard compared to other parts of C.
And the answer can never be to go back on fundamentally good language feature (a bounded buffer - damit!) but always push towards better implementations.
VLA are poorly defined feature for which some implementations offer additional protection.
And I agree, automatic VLA aren't inherently a bad feature; it's just a poor feature of C99, C11, C17 and sadly still C23*.
I have faith we will be able to finally tackle it in C2y, but until then, I'm with Eskil in opinion ISO C would be better off without them all those years.
* Thank you for your work on N3121, hopefully we will vote it in during next meeting :)