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up vote -5 down vote favorite

look at these calls closely:

printf("hello, world\n");
printf("%d", 2);
printf("%d%g\n", 2, 2.3);

we see that printf can accept any type and any number of args. however we know that functions in c only take fixed length args and should have a compatible prototype to match the arg. what would be the prototype of printf ?

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if you don't know variadic functions, this question cannot be answered ! – Abhinav Pandey Nov 29 '11 at 12:01
6  
and if you already know variadic functions, why on earth did you post this question? :-/ – Péter Török Nov 29 '11 at 15:15

2 Answers

up vote 8 down vote

we know that functions in c only take fixed length args

So you know it incorrectly. printf (and several other standard library functions) use a language feature called variable argument list.

Btw its signature declaration looks more or less like this (may be different on your platform):

int printf ( const char * format, ... );
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whether you write the "format" or not doesn't matter in function declaration – Abhinav Pandey Nov 29 '11 at 12:34
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@AbhinavPandey, at least if readability (by humans) doesn't matter, that is :-) – Péter Török Nov 29 '11 at 12:38
"function signature" really is a C++ term associated with overloading; C doesn't do overloading so it only has a function declaration. – MSalters Nov 29 '11 at 13:08
Wouldn't ommiting format in the declaration make it possible to call printf(1); without even a compiler warning? – user281377 Nov 29 '11 at 13:18
@MSalters, thanks, fixed. – Péter Török Nov 29 '11 at 15:14
up vote 3 down vote 
extern int printf (__const char *__restrict __format, ...);

The ellipsis indicate that this function uses a variable argument list.

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Why the leading underscores for const and restrict? Those are perfectly good keywords in C99, and the right ones for the function declaration. (__format is a reserved identifier, but may be correct for a particular implementation.) – David Thornley Nov 29 '11 at 15:21
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Because the declaration is copied-and-pasted from the GNU C Library version of stdio.h. – dan04 Nov 29 '11 at 15:45
Dan04: exactly. Lazy me ;-) – user281377 Nov 29 '11 at 22:41

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