Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!decwrl!labrea!eos!ames!umd5!brl-adm!brl-smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@brl-smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn )
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: death of nargs(3)
Message-ID: <7773@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Date: 27 Apr 88 15:39:26 GMT
References: <1641@homxb.UUCP> <7765@brl-smoke.ARPA> <9945@tekecs.TEK.COM>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 7

It is perhaps also worth pointing out that nargs() didn't really return
the number of arguments, just the number of words on the stack used for
arguments.  As C grew, this became less sensible.

I can easily enough imagine a reasonable implementation of C for which
requiring that something like nargs() work would force a slower function
call interface, which would be a poor trade-off.