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in reply to Re^2: XS/Inline::C and ellipsis syntax
in thread XS/Inline::C and ellipsis syntax

Hmmm. I believe I now understand your dilemna.

Basically, you want to be able to dynamically create parameter lists at runtime in C the same as Perl.

Alas, it can't be done. Well, at least not easily, and definitely not in a portable manner.

Long ago, when Kernigan and Ritchie still had full heads of hair with nary a gray follicle, some C compilers supported the varargs' complementary ability to create variable length argument lists. (I vaguely recall using it occasionally on SysVR3 and MSDOS...aha, look what google found!).

But somewhere in the past 2 decades, our friends on the various C standards committees seem to have mislaid that capability. Presumably because it was very dangerous, and because the way stackframes get built on different platforms varies significantly.

So about the only way to do that sort of thing these days is to dive into the assembler and handcraft your own stackframes. Or, more likely, rewrite your programs to avoid the need for dynamically building argument lists. Which unfortunately usually means writing a lot more code.


Perl Contrarian & SQL fanboy