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From: franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams)
Newsgroups: net.lang.c
Subject: Re:  WHAT DOES NARGS() DO?
Message-ID: <1355@mmintl.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 30-Apr-86 19:51:19 EDT
Article-I.D.: mmintl.1355
Posted: Wed Apr 30 19:51:19 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 3-May-86 02:15:32 EDT
References: <289@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Reply-To: franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams)
Organization: Multimate International, E. Hartford, CT
Lines: 16

In article <289@brl-smoke.ARPA> gwyn@BRL.ARPA writes:
>nargs() was suppressed about the time of 7th Edition UNIX (1978)
>and should not be used for anything these days.  It returned the
>actual argument count, for use in functions taking a variable
>number of arguments.  If nargs() had to be supported, it would
>have an impact on the run-time architecture; many of those now
>in use simply cannot support nargs().

This is not strictly speaking true.  You could have a convention whereby
the number of arguments was always pushed on the stack or left in a
register or something.  This would mean that supporting nargs would
put a burden (time and space) on a program compiled with the compiler.
This is definitely not a good idea.

Frank Adams                           ihnp4!philabs!pwa-b!mmintl!franka
Multimate International    52 Oakland Ave North    E. Hartford, CT 06108