Peter Olson <peabo@???> writes:
5>> On January 22, 2016 at 4:34 PM Rainer Weikusat <rainerweikusat@???> wrote:

[...]

>>     p = buf = alloca(total);

[...]

> the failure mode of alloca is SIGSEGV or some other malfunction and
> there is no way to test for it

It's supposed to allocate memory in the current stack frame which will
work unless the stack has already grown to the limit.