-wait until the next alloca() call from a function with the same or a shorter
-stack length. Thus, in some cases, a few memory blocks will be kept although
-they are not needed any more.
+wait until the next @code{alloca} call from a function with the same or a
+shorter stack length. Thus, in some cases, a few memory blocks will be kept
+although they are not needed any more.
+
+The user can @code{#include <alloca.h>} and use @code{alloca} on all platforms.
+Note that the @code{#include <alloca.h>} must be the first one after the
+autoconf-generated @file{config.h}, for AIX 3 compatibility. Thanks to IBM for
+this nice restriction!
+
+Note that GCC 3.1 and 3.2 can @emph{inline} functions that call @code{alloca}.
+When this happens, the memory blocks allocated with @code{alloca} will not be
+freed until @emph{the end of the calling function}. If this calling function
+runs a loop calling the function that uses @code{alloca}, the program easily
+gets a stack overflow and crashes. To protect against this compiler behaviour,
+you can mark the function that uses @code{alloca} with the following attribute: