Forward an invocation of a variadic function in C

Question

In C, is it possible to forward the invocation of a variadic function? As in,

int my_printf(char *fmt, ...) {
    fprintf(stderr, \"Calling printf with fmt %         


        

Answer 1

gcc offers an extension that can do this: __builtin_apply and relatives. See Constructing Function Calls in the gcc manual.

An example:

#include 

int my_printf(const char *fmt, ...) {
    void *args = __builtin_apply_args();
    printf("Hello there! Format string is %s\n", fmt);
    void *ret = __builtin_apply((void (*)())printf, args, 1000);
    __builtin_return(ret);
}

int main(void) {
    my_printf("%d %f %s\n", -37, 3.1415, "spam");
    return 0;
}

Try it on godbolt

There are some cautions in the documentation that it might not work in more complicated situations. And you have to hardcode a maximum size for the arguments (here I used 1000). But it might be a reasonable alternative to the other approaches that involve dissecting the stack in either C or assembly language.