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From: henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards
Subject: Re: _print/_doprnt; curses on sys III
Message-ID: <3970@utzoo.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 20-Jun-84 20:44:30 EDT
Article-I.D.: utzoo.3970
Posted: Wed Jun 20 20:44:30 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 20-Jun-84 20:44:30 EDT
References: <978@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Lines: 19

Alas, Bob Toxen's rewrites of printw and wprintw continue to have
implementation dependencies:  the declare-lots-of-arguments trick
depends on the stack frame being organized a certain way.

Before we get started on a big discussion about varargs functions,
let me point out that this was discussed at excruciating length a
few months ago (possibly in another newsgroup, I forget), and the
conclusion was quite simple:

	There is *no* fully machine-independent way to write a
	function which takes a variable number of arguments, even
	if all the function is trying to do is to pass its argument
	list on to another function.

Not even the varargs.h machinery is workable on all machines, and
the various more simplistic schemes are much less portable.
-- 
				Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
				{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry