Yes, and variable length arrays were made an optional part of the standard in C11. Whereas flexible array members remain a standard required feature.

Flexible array members don’t allocate a dynamic amount of memory on the stack.

▲ uecker 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

VLAs are supported by basically all modern C compilers though, and I do not think adding them was a mistake (I certainly use them a lot!). They got a bad reputation due to stack clash attacks, but in the past some compilers did not implement stack probing (clang was very late). But this was fixed a decade ago.

	▲	david2ndaccount an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Their specification is pretty bad, allowing code like: `#include <stdio.h> #include <stddef.h> void v(int y[printf("hello world!\n")]){ } int main(){ v(NULL); typedef int wut[printf("oh no\n")]; } $ cc vla.c && ./a.out hello world! oh no` `typedef`s with side effects...

▲ 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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