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From: wes@obie.UUCP (Barnacle Wes)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c,comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: cdecl keyword ( re: C Decl ... )
Message-ID: <146@obie.UUCP>
Date: 10 Apr 88 19:29:34 GMT
References: <1238@wjvax.UUCP> <297@ho7cad.ATT.COM> <1242@wjvax.UUCP> <121@csanta.UUCP>
Organization: the Well of Souls
Lines: 33
Summary: Give it up:  Stop trying to justify MS-DOSness in C!

In article <7595@brl-smoke.ARPA> gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>)
writes (about the "cdecl" keyword):
| Of all the useless additions to C, this one has to take the cake!
| #define cdecl /*nothing*/

In article <2521@bsu-cs.UUCP> dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi) writes:
> The real usefulness of cdecl comes when one is doing mixed language
> programming.

In article <121@csanta.UUCP>, greg@csanta.UUCP (Greg Comeau) writes:
% [...] this means that the overhead for pascal function calls during
% execution is faster because pascal type functions can clean up the
% stack when they are finished with a 'ret #bytes' instruction.  With the
% "standard" C calling concentions, the caller usually does the cleaning
% up with an increment (decrement?) of the sp *after* the call to the function.
% 
% Result is: faster & smaller code.  Not too often that you can kill them two
% birds with the same stone.

So why should we force these MS-DOSisms on the rest of the C-speaking
world?  This is yet another kludge around the Intel iAPX?86
architecture (or lack thereof :-), just like "near" and "far".  Tell
me, what does "near" mean on a 68000 system?  I can call C routines
from the Unix fortran compiler WITHOUT declaring the C routine to be
of "fortran calling sequence."  Let's not put these kludges in a C
language standard.  If your programming environment needs them, let
them be (non-portable) extensions to the standard needed to support
your (non-) operating system!
-- 
    /\              -  "Against Stupidity,  -    {backbones}!
   /\/\  .    /\    -  The Gods Themselves  -  utah-cs!utah-gr!
  /    \/ \/\/  \   -   Contend in Vain."   -  uplherc!sp7040!
 / U i n T e c h \  -       Schiller        -     obie!wes