varargs(5)							File Formats Manual							varargs(5)

NAME

       varargs - handle variable argument list

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

       This set of macros enables programmers to write portable procedures that accept variable argument lists.  Routines that have variable argu-
       ment lists (such as but do not use are inherently nonportable, because different machines use different argument-passing  conventions  (see
       printf(3S)).

       is used as the parameter list in a function header.

       is a declaration for No semicolon should follow

       is a type defined for the variable used to traverse the list.

       is called to initialize pvar to the beginning of the list.  The type of argN should be the same as the argument to the function just before
       the variable portion of the argument list.

       returns the next argument in the list pointed to by type is the type the argument is expected to be.  Different types can be mixed, but	it
       is up to the routine to know what type of argument is expected, because it cannot be determined at runtime.

       is used to clean up.

       Multiple traversals, each bracketed by are possible.

       NOTE:  The header file is provided for compatibility with pre-ANSI compilers and earlier releases of HP C/HP-UX.  It is superceded by which
       includes all of the macros.

EXAMPLE

       The following example shows a possible implementation of (see exec(2)):

       The next example illustrates how a function that receives variable arguments can pass these arguments down to other functions.	To  accom-
       plish  this,  the  first  routine in this example) which receives the variable argument list must pass the address pointer resulting from a
       call to on to any subsequent calls that need to access this same variable argument list.  All routines that receive this address pointer in
       this  example)  need  only  to use to access the original variable argument list just as if they were the original routine to be passed the
       variable arguments.

       In this example, one can imagine that there are a series of other routines (such as a and that also call the function.

	      #include <stdio.h>
	      #include <varargs.h>
	      #include <unistd.h>

	      int error_count;

	      /* VARARGS4 -- for lint */
	      int
	      log_errors(log_fp, func_name, err_num, msg_fmt, va_alist)
	      FILE *log_fp;
	      char *func_name;
	      int err_num;
	      char *msg_fmt;
	      va_dcl
	      {

		  va_list ap;

		  /* Print error header information */
		  (void) fprintf(log_fp, "
ERROR in process %d
", getpid());
		  (void) fprintf(log_fp, "  function "%s": ", func_name);
		  switch(err_num)
		  {
		      case ILLEGAL_OPTION:
			  (void) fprintf(log_fp, "illegal option
");
			  break;
		      case CANNOT_PARSE:
			  (void) fprintf(log_fp, "cannot parse input file
");
			  break;
		      ...
		  }

		 /*
		  * Get pointer to first variable argument so that we can
		  * pass it on to v_print_log().  We do this so that
		  * v_print_log() can access the variable arguments passed
		  * to this routine.
		  */
		  va_start(ap);

		  v_print_log(log_fp, msg_fmt, ap);

		  va_end(ap);
	      }

	      /* VARARGS2 -- for lint */
	      int
	      v_print_log(log_fp, fmt, ap)
	      FILE *log_fp;
	      char *fmt;
	      va_list ap;
	      {

		  /*
		   * If "%Y" is the first two characters in the format string,
		   * a second file pointer has been passed in to print general
		   * message information to.  The rest of the format string is
		   * a standard  printf(3S) format string.
		   */
		  if ((*fmt == '%') && (*(fmt + 1) == 'Y'))
		  {
		      FILE *other_fp;

		      fmt += 2;

		      other_fp = (FILE *) va_arg(ap, char *);
		      if (other_fp != (FILE *) NULL)
		      {
			  /*
			   * Print general message information to additional stream.
			   */
			  (void) vfprintf(other_fp, fmt, ap);
			  (void) fflush(other_fp);
		      }
		  }

		  /*
		   * Now print it to the log file.
		   */
		  (void) vfprintf(log_fp, fmt, ap);
	      }

WARNINGS

       It is up to the calling routine to specify how many arguments there are, because it is not always possible to determine this from the stack
       frame.  For example, is passed a zero pointer to signal the end of the list.  can determine how many arguments are present by the format.

       It  is non-portable to specify a second argument of or to because arguments seen by the called function are not or C converts and arguments
       to and converts arguments to before passing them to a function.

SEE ALSO

       exec(2), vprintf(3S), stdarg(5).

STANDARDS CONFORMANCE

																	varargs(5)