C programming - standard library stdarg.h
The "stdarg.h" header file in C programming provides a way to define functions that can accept a variable number of arguments, which can be of any type. This is useful for functions that need to accept a variable number of arguments, such as printf and scanf.
The "stdarg.h" header file defines a macro "va_list" that is used to declare a variable that will hold the list of arguments, and several functions for manipulating the list of arguments, including:
"va_start": Initializes the "va_list" variable to point to the first argument.
"va_arg": Returns the next argument of a specified type from the "va_list" variable.
"va_end": Cleans up the "va_list" variable.
Here is an example of using the "stdarg.h" header file in a C program:
#include <stdio.h> #include <stdarg.h> void print_numbers(int num, ...) { va_list args; va_start(args, num); for (int i = 0; i < num; i++) { int n = va_arg(args, int); printf("%d ", n); } va_end(args); } int main() { print_numbers(3, 1, 2, 3); printf("\n"); return 0; }
In this example, the "stdarg.h" header file functions are used to define a function "print_numbers" that accepts a variable number of arguments. The "va_start" function is used to initialize the "va_list" variable, and the "va_arg" function is used to retrieve each argument from the list. The "va_end" function is used to clean up the "va_list" variable. The output of the program will be:
1 2 3
Note that the behavior of the "stdarg.h" header file functions is implementation-dependent, and there are some platform-specific issues to be aware of when using them.