Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!auspex!guy
From: guy@auspex.UUCP (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Efficient coding considered harmful?
Message-ID: <503@auspex.UUCP>
Date: 24 Nov 88 23:01:44 GMT
References: <3105@hubcap.UUCP> <34112@XAIT.XEROX.COM> <1700@dataio.Data-IO.COM> <7700@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <771@wsccs.UUCP> <437@auspex.UU <592@tuck.nott-cs.UUCP>
Reply-To: guy@auspex.UUCP (Guy Harris)
Organization: Auspex Systems, Santa Clara
Lines: 28

>	Naw!  Let's see [PDP 11/44, V7]:

It may well be true that it can be done - I certainly won't say it's
impossible, I was just considering the possibility that it wasn't in the
original C language because either 1) it would have made the compiler
too big or 2) DMR thought it would.

At this point, I'd prefer to hear Dennis say why, when C was first
created, the types of the arguments to a function was not considered
part of the type of the function, or at least an answer from somebody
working with him at the time.  Most other answers would probably be
purely speculative.

>	Of course, the real solution to the "varargs" problem, not possible
>in C because of the dead hand of history, is to use extra brackets, so that
>every function has a fixed number of arguments:
>
>		printf ("%d %c %s\n", (i, c, "hello world"));
>			^...arg1...^, ^.......arg2........^
>
>	Now, what language did I see that nifty idea in? [:-)]

OK, so what is the data type of

	(i, c, "hello world")

Just adding extra brackets wouldn't have been sufficient; it leaves
questions such as that one....