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From: ark@alice.UucP (Andrew Koenig)
Newsgroups: net.lang.c,net.micro.pc,net.unix-wizards
Subject: Re: Varargs, portability
Message-ID: <5576@alice.uUCp>
Date: Mon, 2-Jun-86 11:36:46 EDT
Article-I.D.: alice.5576
Posted: Mon Jun  2 11:36:46 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 4-Jun-86 07:34:36 EDT
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Organization: Bell Labs, Murray Hill
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> This is, of course, not a hardware restriction but instead is a
> software implementation restriction.

Yes and no.  Most C compilers on the VAX use the built-in subroutine
instructions for C subroutines.  These instructions limit the argument
list to 255 words.  That is indeed a hardware limitation.

Now, you may wish to consider it as an implementation restriction that
the compiler does not use some other method of dealing with big argument
lists.  Indeed, you may be right.  My original point, though, was that
the problem arose because of a hardware restriction.