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How to pass variable number of arguments in a C function?

+3 votes
556 views

Can someone help me with step by step example and may be with sample code.

posted Dec 24, 2014 by anonymous

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2 Answers

+1 vote

Use the <stdarg.h> header (or, if you must, the older <varargs.h>).

Here is a function which concatenates an arbitrary number of strings into malloc'ed memory:

#include <stdlib.h>     /* for malloc, NULL, size_t */
#include <stdarg.h>     /* for va_ stuff */
#include <string.h>     /* for strcat et al */

char *vstrcat(char *first, ...)
{
    size_t len = 0;
    char *retbuf;
    va_list argp;
    char *p;

    if(first == NULL)
        return NULL;

    len = strlen(first);

    va_start(argp, first);

    while((p = va_arg(argp, char *)) != NULL)
        len += strlen(p);

    va_end(argp);

    retbuf = malloc(len + 1);   /* +1 for trailing \0 */

    if(retbuf == NULL)
        return NULL;        /* error */

    (void)strcpy(retbuf, first);

    va_start(argp, first);

    while((p = va_arg(argp, char *)) != NULL)
        (void)strcat(retbuf, p);

    va_end(argp);

    return retbuf;
}

Usage is something like

char *str = vstrcat("Hello, ", "world!", (char *)NULL);
answer Dec 29, 2014 by Prakash
–1 vote

For this we need to use elipsis(...), and out job is doe, a sample could be like this
int function(int, ... )
{
/*Your code
*/
}

int main()
{
function(1, 2, 3);
function(1, 2, 3, 4);
}

answer Dec 27, 2014 by Atiqur Rahman
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