static function in C

Question

What is the point of making a function static in C?

Answer 1

pmg is spot on about encapsulation; beyond hiding the function from other translation units (or rather, because of it), making functions static can also confer performance benefits in the presence of compiler optimizations.

Because a static function cannot be called from anywhere outside of the current translation unit (unless the code takes a pointer to its address), the compiler controls all the call points into it.

This means that it is free to use a non-standard ABI, inline it entirely, or perform any number of other optimizations that might not be possible for a function with external linkage.