It's probably silly to start remote-lawyering with Mr Torvalds of all people, but that is obviously false, and (also obviously) he knows it. If it acts exactly

It's probably silly to start remote-lawyering with Mr Torvalds of all people, but that is obviously false, and (also obviously) he knows it. If it acts exactly like a function, show me its prototype, and how you would call it through a function pointer. I'll be here, waiting while thumbing through my old K&R, or something ... Also, when using variable-length arrays (which are being phased out, but they are in for instance C99) this works: #include <stdio.h> #include <stdlib.h> #include <string.h> int main(int argc, char *argv[]) { size_t arglens[argc]; for (size_t i = 0; i < sizeof arglens / sizeof *arglens; ++i) { arglens[i] = strlen(argv[i]); } printf("Computed %zu lens:\n", sizeof arglens / sizeof *arglens); for (size_t i = 0; i < sizeof arglens / sizeof *arglens; ++i) { printf("%zu: '%s' is %zu\n", i, argv[i], arglens[i]); } return 0; } Compile (as C99!) and run: $ gcc -o arglens -std=c99 arglens.c $ ./arglens foo bar baz fooofooofoo Computed 5 lens: 0: './arglens' is 9 1: 'foo' is 3 2: 'bar' is 3 3: 'baz' is 3 4: 'fooofooofoo' is 11 Notice how sizeof is computing the size of a run-time sized array. Very much unlike a function. Edit: fix indent for code formatting (hard tabs don't work).