VLAs as arbitrary expressions

[Thomas M. Breuel]

Richard Stallman writes:
 > Aside from the issue of implementation, there is the fact that right
 > now C is very consistent in terms of order of parsing of expressions.
 > Your proposal resembles some of the features in C++ in that it throws
 > consistency to the winds for the sake of making a particular usage
 > look natural.  I think this is a bad way to design a language.

Consistency is not an end in itself. If a particular feature is easy
to understand, efficient, natural, and useful, I think it is perfectly
OK if it introduces some new concept into the language.

In the case of the Cray array syntax, this "new" concept is that type
analysis of an expression may be carried out in a different context
from the one where the expression is textually located.

					Thomas.