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The C99 (ISO/IEC 9899:1999) standard of C introduced a new, powerful feature called Variable Length Arrays (VLAs). The size of an array with automatic storage duration (i.e. stack allocated) can be determined at run time. Each instance of the array may even have a different length. Unlike alloca(), they’re a sanctioned form of dynamic stack allocation. At first glance, VLAs seem convenient, useful, and efficient. Heap allocations have a small cost because the allocator needs to do some work to f...