Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!henry 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