length of va_list when using variable list arguments?

Question

Is there any way to compute length of va_list? All examples I saw the number of variable parameters is given explicitly.

Answer 1

You can try to use function _vscprintf if you work under MS Visual Studio. Here is an example how to use _vscprintf, I used it to know how much space I require to malloc for my console title.

int SetTitle(const char *format,...){
    char *string;
    va_list arguments;

    va_start(arguments,format);
        string=(char *)malloc(sizeof(char)*(_vscprintf(format,arguments)+1));
        if(string==NULL)
            SetConsoleTitle("Untitled");
        else
            vsprintf(string,format,arguments);
    va_end(arguments);

    if(string==NULL)
        return SETTITLE_MALLOCFAILED;
    SetConsoleTitle(string);
    free(string);
    return 0;
}

Or you can do this, add output to temporary file and then read data from it to allocated memory like I did in this next example:

void r_text(const char *format, ...){
    FILE *tmp = tmpfile();
    va_list vl;
    int len;
    char *str;

    va_start(vl, format);
        len = vfprintf(tmp, format, vl);
    va_end(vl);
    rewind(tmp);
    str = (char *) malloc(sizeof(char) * len +1);
    fgets(str, len+1, tmp);
    printf("%s",str);
    free(str);
    fclose(tmp);
}