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4.13 Arrays of Length Zero

Zero-length arrays are allowed in GNU C. They are very useful as the last element of a structure which is really a header for a variable-length object:

struct line { int length; char contents[0]; }; { struct line *thisline = (struct line *) malloc (sizeof (struct line) + this_length); thisline->length = this_length; }

In standard C, you would have to give contents a length of 1, which means either you waste space or complicate the argument to malloc.