[Bug]: non-static arrays stored in object file

[Steve McAndrewSmith <steve@finagle.org>]

Here is (what I believe to be) a rather simple bug.  It goes something
like this...

Take (the latest?) egcs (under cygwin 20.1b):

  $ gcc --version
  egcs-2.91.57

... and the following one-line C file.

  char Foo[10000000];

compile it.

  $ gcc -c foo.c

Check the object file size:

  -rw-r--r--   1 500      everyone      375 Jul 29 09:00 foo.o

All good.  HOWEVER, try compiling it as C++:

  $ mv foo.c foo.cc
  $ gcc -c foo.cc

... and check the object file size:

  -rw-r--r--   1 500      everyone 10000383 Jul 29 09:00 foo.o

Yikes!  It appears to be storing the entire *uninitialized* array in the
object file (this gets even more exciting if the array is a structure,
and padding makes the array even larger).

Workaround: declaring the array as 'static' prevents this.  For my
project, this is an acceptable solution -- the array is large, so it
must not be auto, but it is only used by one function, so it need not be
extern-able.

Anything else I should try?  Thanks ...

-Steve