Alloca implementation

implementing alloca actually requires compiler assistance. A few people here are saying it's as easy as:

sub esp, <size>

which is unfortunately only half of the picture. Yes that would "allocate space on the stack" but there are a couple of gotchas.

1. if the compiler had emitted code which references other variables relative to esp instead of ebp (typical if you compile with no frame pointer). Then those references need to be adjusted. Even with frame pointers, compilers do this sometimes.

2. more importantly, by definition, space allocated with alloca must be "freed" when the function exits.

The big one is point #2. Because you need the compiler to emit code to symmetrically add <size> to esp at every exit point of the function.

The most likely case is the compiler offers some intrinsics which allow library writers to ask the compiler for the help needed.

EDIT:

In fact, in glibc (GNU's implementation of libc). The implementation of alloca is simply this:

#ifdef  __GNUC__
# define __alloca(size) __builtin_alloca (size)
#endif /* GCC.  */

EDIT:

after thinking about it, the minimum I believe would be required would be for the compiler to always use a frame pointer in any functions which uses alloca, regardless of optimization settings. This would allow all locals to be referenced through ebp safely and the frame cleanup would be handled by restoring the frame pointer to esp.

EDIT:

So i did some experimenting with things like this:

#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <stdio.h>

#define __alloca(p, N) \
    do { \
        __asm__ __volatile__( \
        "sub %1, %%esp \n" \
        "mov %%esp, %0  \n" \
         : "=m"(p) \
         : "i"(N) \
         : "esp"); \
    } while(0)

int func() {
    char *p;
    __alloca(p, 100);
    memset(p, 0, 100);
    strcpy(p, "hello world\n");
    printf("%s\n", p);
}

int main() {
    func();
}

which unfortunately does not work correctly. After analyzing the assembly output by gcc. It appears that optimizations get in the way. The problem seems to be that since the compiler's optimizer is entirely unaware of my inline assembly, it has a habit of doing the things in an unexpected order and still referencing things via esp.

Here's the resultant ASM:

8048454: push   ebp
8048455: mov    ebp,esp
8048457: sub    esp,0x28
804845a: sub    esp,0x64                      ; <- this and the line below are our "alloc"
804845d: mov    DWORD PTR [ebp-0x4],esp
8048460: mov    eax,DWORD PTR [ebp-0x4]
8048463: mov    DWORD PTR [esp+0x8],0x64      ; <- whoops! compiler still referencing via esp
804846b: mov    DWORD PTR [esp+0x4],0x0       ; <- whoops! compiler still referencing via esp
8048473: mov    DWORD PTR [esp],eax           ; <- whoops! compiler still referencing via esp           
8048476: call   8048338 <memset@plt>
804847b: mov    eax,DWORD PTR [ebp-0x4]
804847e: mov    DWORD PTR [esp+0x8],0xd       ; <- whoops! compiler still referencing via esp
8048486: mov    DWORD PTR [esp+0x4],0x80485a8 ; <- whoops! compiler still referencing via esp
804848e: mov    DWORD PTR [esp],eax           ; <- whoops! compiler still referencing via esp
8048491: call   8048358 <memcpy@plt>
8048496: mov    eax,DWORD PTR [ebp-0x4]
8048499: mov    DWORD PTR [esp],eax           ; <- whoops! compiler still referencing via esp
804849c: call   8048368 <puts@plt>
80484a1: leave
80484a2: ret

As you can see, it isn't so simple. Unfortunately, I stand by my original assertion that you need compiler assistance.

It would be tricky to do this - in fact, unless you have enough control over the compiler's code generation it cannot be done entirely safely. Your routine would have to manipulate the stack, such that when it returned everything was cleaned, but the stack pointer remained in such a position that the block of memory remained in that place.

The problem is that unless you can inform the compiler that the stack pointer is has been modified across your function call, it may well decide that it can continue to refer to other locals (or whatever) through the stack pointer - but the offsets will be incorrect.

The C and C++ standards don't specify that alloca() has to the use the stack, because alloca() isn't in the C or C++ standards (or POSIX for that matter)¹.

A compiler may also implement alloca() using the heap. For example, the ARM RealView (RVCT) compiler's alloca() uses malloc() to allocate the buffer (referenced on their website here), and also causes the compiler to emit code that frees the buffer when the function returns. This doesn't require playing with the stack pointer, but still requires compiler support.

Microsoft Visual C++ has a _malloca() function that uses the heap if there isn't enough room on the stack, but it requires the caller to use _freea(), unlike _alloca(), which does not need/want explicit freeing.

(With C++ destructors at your disposal, you can obviously do the cleanup without compiler support, but you can't declare local variables inside an arbitrary expression so I don't think you could write an alloca() macro that uses RAII. Then again, apparently you can't use alloca() in some expressions (like function parameters) anyway.)

¹ Yes, it's legal to write an alloca() that simply calls system("/usr/games/nethack").

For the D programming language, the source code for alloca() comes with the download. How it works is fairly well commented. For dmd1, it's in /dmd/src/phobos/internal/alloca.d. For dmd2, it's in /dmd/src/druntime/src/compiler/dmd/alloca.d.

Continuation Passing Style Alloca

Variable-Length Array in pure ISO C++. Proof-of-Concept implementation.

Usage

void foo(unsigned n)
{
    cps_alloca<Payload>(n,[](Payload *first,Payload *last)
    {
        fill(first,last,something);
    });
}

Core Idea

template<typename T,unsigned N,typename F>
auto cps_alloca_static(F &&f) -> decltype(f(nullptr,nullptr))
{
    T data[N];
    return f(&data[0],&data[0]+N);
}

template<typename T,typename F>
auto cps_alloca_dynamic(unsigned n,F &&f) -> decltype(f(nullptr,nullptr))
{
    vector<T> data(n);
    return f(&data[0],&data[0]+n);
}

template<typename T,typename F>
auto cps_alloca(unsigned n,F &&f) -> decltype(f(nullptr,nullptr))
{
    switch(n)
    {
        case 1: return cps_alloca_static<T,1>(f);
        case 2: return cps_alloca_static<T,2>(f);
        case 3: return cps_alloca_static<T,3>(f);
        case 4: return cps_alloca_static<T,4>(f);
        case 0: return f(nullptr,nullptr);
        default: return cps_alloca_dynamic<T>(n,f);
    }; // mpl::for_each / array / index pack / recursive bsearch / etc variacion
}

LIVE DEMO

cps_alloca on github