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From: Keith Thompson <kst-u@mib.org>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Set the result of void function
Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2017 16:44:44 -0700
Organization: None to speak of
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David Kleinecke <dkleinecke@gmail.com> writes:
> On Friday, September 29, 2017 at 11:23:36 AM UTC-7, Keith Thompson wrote:
[...]
>> What point were you trying to make?  
>
> I didn't think I was being that obscure. I was saying
> that if we have no information about suitable arguments
> then we could write
>
>    int not_printf ();
>    not_printf ("Hello World"); 
>    not_printf ("uses %d words", 2);
>
> and get the expected result - assuming we knew the 
> implementation always got the arguments in the right
> places.

Perhaps so.  Of course any such code relies on explicitly undefined
behavior, and the code that implements not_printf() would have to
use implementation-specific methods to obtain the argument values.

That's ugly and error-prone, and it's exactly why C since 1989 has
provided more reliable mechanisms.

(Your reuse of the name "printf", your showing a definition of a
printf function that explicitly has no parameters, and your statement
that <stdio.h> is not required without mentioning freestanding
implementations all contributed to the confusion.)

-- 
Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) kst-u@mib.org  <http://www.ghoti.net/~kst>
Working, but not speaking, for JetHead Development, Inc.
"We must do something.  This is something.  Therefore, we must do this."
    -- Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn, "Yes Minister"