Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!brl-adm!brl-smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@brl-smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn )
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Check the Arg Count
Message-ID: <5526@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Date: Fri, 16-Jan-87 19:54:13 EST
Article-I.D.: brl-smok.5526
Posted: Fri Jan 16 19:54:13 1987
Date-Received: Mon, 19-Jan-87 23:43:52 EST
References: <1634@enea.UUCP> <594@mcgill-vision.UUCP> <1639@enea.UUCP> <5064@mimsy.UUCP> <305@haddock.UUCP>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 15

In article <305@haddock.UUCP> karl@haddock.ISC.COM.UUCP (Karl Heuer) writes:
>...  Neither of these would be necessary if C supported nargs().

"Number of arguments" is useless information without also being told
the types of the arguments.  The old UNIX implementations of nargs()
that I'm familiar with actually reported the number of words on the
stack used by parameters, not the actual number of parameters.  That
is even more useless.  I don't know how one could provide a logically
satisfactory specification for some such facility without imposing a
substantial overhead penalty on implementation of function linkage,
just to support a feature that most of us have gotten along perfectly
well without.

I know there are linkers that support dynamic binding etc. but the
point is we don't want to mandate such support on all conforming systems.