Python for Bioinformatics: variadic arguments

Saturday, June 16, 2012

variadic arguments

I got curious about functions with variadic arguments like in NSArray:

+ (id)arrayWithObjects:(id)firstObj, ...

Here's are two C examples. In either case, it's required to have a named argument that precedes the variable part. In the first method, that variable gives a count of the arguments. In the second, it's not used for anything except to show where to start. A sentinel value shows the end of the variable length argument list. I also incorporated __func__, which I came across in my reading and was new to me.

// clang variadic.c -o prog
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdarg.h>

int f(int count, ...)
{
  printf("%s%s", __func__, "\n");
  int n, sum; 
  va_list ap;
  va_start(ap, count);
  sum = 0;
  for ( ; count > 0; count--) {
      n = va_arg(ap, int);
      printf("n = %3d\n", n);
      sum += n;
  }
  va_end(ap);
  return sum;
}

int g(int x, ...)
{
  printf("%s%s", __func__, "\n");
  fflush(stdout);
  int n, sum; 
  va_list ap;
  va_start(ap, x);
  n = x;
  sum = 0;
  while (!(0)) {
      printf("n = %3d\n", n);
      sum += n;
      n = va_arg(ap, int);
      if (n == 0) { break; }
  }
  va_end(ap);
  return sum;
}

int main(int argc, char * argv[]) {
    int result = f(3,1,2,3);
    printf ("sum = %d\n", result);
    result = g(1,2,3,0);
    printf ("sum = %d\n", result);
    return 0;
}

> ./prog
f
n =   1
n =   2
n =   3
sum = 6
g
n =   1
n =   2
n =   3
sum = 6