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About 15 years ago, and the QA idiots are less incompetent than the ![Sunshine | [little ray of sunshine]](https://codeproject.global.ssl.fastly.net/script/Forums/Images/sunshine.gif) s guilty of acrobat/reader.
I'd recently started a new job and moved into my own home. I'd been invited to a beta for a new version of a game I'd been playing heavily for years. The developer send the NDA as a PDF form which would've been great since I didn't have a printer; except that it was only possible to 'sign' and save the form if you had the full version of Acrobat, not the free reader.
I ended up screenshotting it to MS paint, filling in all the normal text using the text tool, freehanded my signature (I was really tempted to use the cursive font to see if they said anything), and then saved it off as several .bmp files (for spite) which I emailed off. Surprisingly for an organization that created such an asinine process they were quite happy with the result.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, weighing all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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I have often thought there is good money to be made in teaching people how to scan their sig into their system for just such an emergency and also, in just cleaning up pdf forms for companies. But alas. I don't want to deal with such people.
To err is human to really elephant it up you need a computer
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I have, I can't read that one either. 
"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment
"Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst
"I don't drink any more... then again, I don't drink any less." - Mike Mullikins uncle
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One of the most awkward UI controls that I have seen was a slider control for your phone number
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GenJerDan wrote: My* fancy controls can also be keyboard controlled with the arrows or paging buttons.
So, where are your CodeProject articles ? 
«One day it will have to be officially admitted that what we have christened reality is an even greater illusion than the world of dreams.» Salvador Dali
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I never completed Mr Mike's course on How to Write Good.
And then, suddenly, I was run over by a truck.
modified 16-Dec-20 6:40am.
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Self governing car is not a rodent that has lost direction! (10)
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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As I'm rarely free at 9am to post one, I'll resist the urge to answer.
Combining "self governing" and "lost direction" in a sentence is getting quite close to politics for a Welshman!
How's the brilliant "Pubs can open with no beer until 6pm at which point they shut to prevent any useful food trade" going? The numbers in my old stomping ground look rather bad at the moment ...
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I don't hear anyone complaining! 
Mind you, I don't go to pubs these days except for a meal, or a wake.
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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OriginalGriff wrote: Self governing car is not a rodent that has lost direction! (10)
Self governing
car AUTO
not NO
a rodent that has lost direction MOUS
AUTONOMOUS
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And that, my friend, means you are up tomorrow! 
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Back in the days of yore, when I did my C programming, I discovered alloca(). Used inside of functions, instead of malloc() (for example), it would free allocated memory when you left the function. I didn't look into the workings but I'd presume it used the stack for memory.
Update: Quick Search [^] and it's in C++, too - and it does use the stack for allocatons.
| Ravings en masse^ |
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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W∴ Balboos, GHB wrote: I'd presume it used the stack for memory.
Yep, exactly.
I had the habit of making objects "stackable" whenever possible, for example strings had fixed size straight into the struct, so the whole object was a single contiguous dataspace easily allocatable in the stack and passed around with a memcpy. Of course it isn't alwasy the best option but I like it when it is.
GCS d--(d+) s-/++ a C++++ U+++ P- L+@ E-- W++ N+ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t+ 5? X R+++ tv-- b+(+++) DI+++ D++ G e++ h--- r+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
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Some of the references warn against its use.
So far as I can tell, it's based upon usage and gotcha's that are common in C - in other words, C is for grownup who take responsibility for their actions.
Simply put - know what you're doing when you do it. Don't free() it - well, duh! That's the point of using it. Beware of stack overflows. Always keep your wits about you with memory usage. Don't use in recursive functions or loops. In a loop, index the allocations into an array of pointers, or, if you want to reuse the same one, allocate it before the loop . . . just like the other memory functions.
Seems standard enough - for the grownups in the room
| Ravings en masse^ |
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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Yeah which is why i don't use it.
I have StaticMemoryPool<C> which can allocate a fixed amount of data from the heap or the stack (capacity C known at compile time) and DynamicMemoryPool which allocates a capacity specified at runtime, but always from the heap.
using dynamic stack allocations is messy because its intertwined with scope. Plus it goes out of scope with the function ends making wrapping it not a thing. Maybe that's why it's warned against. *shrug* I really don't know.
Real programmers use butterflies
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It's only scope, certainly how I used it, was within the function - scope was never a problem. Memory wasn't humongous, then, so allocations were done with care, anyway. There was expanded and extended memory.* It's built in (usually) and automatic. About the only complaint I found really valid is that it's existence in a compiler is not (or was not) guaranteed as it was an official standard. It happened to be everywhere I was (QuickC, MS-C, Wacom-C) on DOS and NT, manly;
Now I live in a stateless world of web development. I will say, however, that with the 400 users, an occasional server request gets an out-of-memory error. I increased it in php.ini a couple of times, but for the most part, the DBA and I share info and he forces filters them to not ask for a million records. A better long-term solution.
*I made a page-swapper so I could access lots of it smoothly beyond the 64K in the original page frame.
| Ravings en masse^ |
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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Quote: Some of the references warn against its use.
Simply put - know what you're doing when you do it. Don't free() it - well, duh! That's the point of using it. Beware of stack overflows. Always keep your wits about you with memory usage. Don't use in recursive functions or loops. In a loop, index the allocations into an array of pointers, or, if you want to reuse the same one, allocate it before the loop . . . just like the other memory functions.
Seems standard enough - for the grownups in the room
Don't use alloca(), it's not part of the C standard.
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I read that too; mentioned it somewhere in this thread.
That would be like "Don't Use that Graphics Library - it's not part of the C Standard".*
| Ravings en masse^ |
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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Only use code that runs as expected on the DeathStation 9000!
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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(fill in clever retort of your choice)
| Ravings en masse^ |
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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That retort is a better retort than I had thought of retorting.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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Thank you. I've been trying to remember the name of that system for ages. I had been meaning to use it in QA, but it's probably too arcane for 99% of those who post questions there.
Keep Calm and Carry On
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I had a programmer who was notorious for declaring char somestr[256];
and RETURNING somestr out of the function to be used by others.
"But it runs fine in the debugger" was his last refrain... LOL
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