Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!gorodish!guy
From: guy@gorodish.Sun.COM (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: problems with varargs
Message-ID: <39767@sun.uucp>
Date: 22 Jan 88 23:35:45 GMT
References: <7962@eleazar.Dartmouth.EDU> <6394@oberon.USC.EDU>
Sender: news@sun.uucp
Lines: 17
Keywords: varargs

> va_alist MUST be the only argument to a varargs function.  (Lint (sun
> 3.2) gets this horrably WRONG.  If you don't get a ton of error
> messages from lint you made a mistake.

Gee, I guess AT&T made a mistake, too, because that code linted quite happily
on a 3B2 running S5R3.1.  4.2BSD has nothing to do with it....

Fortunately, ANSI C repairs this deficiency; va_alist need not be the only
argument to a "stdargs" function.  "va_start" takes an extra argument, which is
the last non-varargs parameter to the function; presumably, this is intended to
permit this to work on machines where "varargs" won't work if "va_alist" isn't
the only argument to the function (I presume they exist, although none of the
machines I've worked with, including my trusty Sun-4, have a problem with
this).
	Guy Harris
	{ihnp4, decvax, seismo, decwrl, ...}!sun!guy
	guy@sun.com