Date: Tue, 14 Oct 1997 10:42:38 +0200 (IST)
From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
To: Paul Derbyshire <ao950 AT FreeNet DOT Carleton DOT CA>
cc: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
Subject: Re: q: va_list and va_start?
In-Reply-To: <61sg74$g3m@freenet-news.carleton.ca>
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On 13 Oct 1997, Paul Derbyshire wrote:

> For some reason, the djgpp dox documents libc and iostreams, but not basic
> C constructs like switch and for, C++ ones like class and templates, nor
> does it document some things like varargs. This is a major pain in the
> keister.

Writing documentation for a language like C or C++ is a very difficult
task.  The only on-line reference I'm aware of comes with
P.J. Plauger's book about ANSI C.  It's in HTML, cannot be freely
redistributed, and its language is very similar to the ANSI standard
(in other words, very terse and difficult to grasp, especially late at
night ;-).  I don't know about any such sources for C++.

People who would like to learn about variable argument lists should
get a good book on C.  One such book is the classic "The C Programming
Language", 2nd ed., by Kernighan and Ritchie.

I'm sure that DJ will gladly accept any explanation of <stdarg.h>
macros and typedefs, if somebody will write and submit it.  Since
v2.02 is in the works, today would be a good time to do that.

(Btw, don't confuse va_list and friends defined on ANSI-standard
<stdarg.h> with non-ANSI <varargs.h>, they are two different and
incompatible solutions to the same problem.)