What technical disadvantages do C99-style VLAs have?
c, c++, c++11, c99, variable-length-array
Solution
VLAs allocate arrays on the stack, in runtime, making it harder, or even impossible to determine the stack size used at compile time. Since the stack has a rather small amount of memory available (in comparison with the heap), many worry that VLAs have a great potential for stack overflow.
The upcoming version of the MISRA-C coding standard is most likely going to ban VLAs as well.
Problem
I heard from many people that variable length array, introduced in C99, are terrible. Some guys on IRC said a minute ago « I don't think C++ will get VLA's, strousoup made some very negative comments about them ». What are the reasons why those people hate VLAs?