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From: dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c,comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: cdecl keyword ( re: C Decl ... )
Message-ID: <2521@bsu-cs.UUCP>
Date: 31 Mar 88 16:19:44 GMT
References: <1238@wjvax.UUCP> <297@ho7cad.ATT.COM> <1242@wjvax.UUCP> <7595@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Reply-To: dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi)
Organization: CS Dept, Ball St U, Muncie, Indiana
Lines: 25

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*/

The real usefulness of cdecl comes when one is doing mixed language
programming.

Now if you compile a routine that needs to be linked with a Pascal
program, you may compile it thus:

     cc -pascal mystuff.c

If mystuff.c uses any C library function, you still want that library
function to be called using the C calling convention, even though you
asked the compiler to generate code for the Pascal calling convention.
If mystuff.c includes a header file declaring library functions, and
the header file uses the cdecl keyword for these, then the compiler
will correctly use the Pascal or C calling convention, whichever is
needed by the called routine.

With a little foresight Microsoft could have just used the same calling
convention in all its language translators.  The "cdecl" keyword is a
belated fix for a problem that need not have existed.
-- 
Rahul Dhesi         UUCP:  <backbones>!{iuvax,pur-ee,uunet}!bsu-cs!dhesi