Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!think!ames!amdahl!sri-unix!quintus!ok
From: ok@quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: #defines with variable # arguments
Summary: here's m4 code
Message-ID: <980@cresswell.quintus.UUCP>
Date: 15 May 88 09:22:31 GMT
References: <2855@phoenix.Princeton.EDU+ <2633@tekcrl.TEK.COM> <979@cresswell.quintus.UUCP>
Distribution: na
Organization: Quintus Computer Systems, Mountain View, CA
Lines: 25

In article <979@cresswell.quintus.UUCP>, ok@quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe) writes:
> What I suggest is a one-time conversion:
> 	sprintf(S,F)		-> sprintf0(S,F)
> 	sprintf(S,F,A)		-> sprintf1(S,F,A)
> 	...
> 	sprintf(S,F,A,B,C,D,E,F)-> sprintf6(S,F,A,B,C,D,E,F)
> however many you need.  This is easy enough to do with m4.

I should substantiate that.

cat >sprintf.m4 <<'EOF'
define(sprintf,``sprintf'eval($#-2)($*)')dnl
EOF

This uses $# and $* which are in the System V and PD versions, but not in
the BSD version, so you may have to do your conversion on System V.
All it takes is
	m4 sprintf.m4 original.c >converted.c

If you just want to make the BSD sprintf() look as though it returned an
integer, do

cat >sprintflen.m4 <<'EOF'
define(sprintf,`strlen(`sprintf'($*))')dnl
EOF