Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!bbn!uwmcsd1!ig!agate!ucbvax!decwrl!labrea!sri-unix!garth!smryan From: smryan@garth.UUCP (Steven Ryan) Newsgroups: comp.lang.c Subject: Re: C vs. FORTRAN Message-ID: <872@garth.UUCP> Date: 5 Jul 88 00:40:55 GMT References: <3136@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <225800038@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu> <797@garth.UUCP> <5173@ihlpf.ATT.COM> <852@garth.UUCP> <546@philmds.UUCP> <30305@cca.CCA.COM> Reply-To: smryan@garth.UUCP (Steven Ryan) Organization: INTERGRAPH (APD) -- Palo Alto, CA Lines: 16 > I'm not sure I'm following this argument (or that it should be >followed) but when has that ever stopped anyone. Arguments about efficiency >of different schemes are affected by how the hardware works. In general, >however, a static area calling sequence scheme will be more efficient than >a stack scheme because the dirty work is done at link time rather than at >execution time. Attend: Thankyou. Actually, the real discussion is why does C have such a crippled argument list? It is possible to pass a list of argument descriptors. The descriptor list can be staticcally created and the overhead is just a register load of a relocated address. Why not? Because most of the C users out there are more interested in speed than security. Is that efficient?