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?