Passing variable number of arguments around

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Say I have a C function which takes a variable number of arguments: How can I call another function which expects a variable number of arguments from inside of it, passing all the arguments that got into the first function?

Example:

void format_string(char *fmt, ...);

void debug_print(int dbg_lvl, char *fmt, ...) {
    format_string(fmt, /* how do I pass all the arguments from '...'? */);
    fprintf(stdout, fmt);
 }
11 Answers

To pass the ellipses on, you initialize a va_list as usual and simply pass it to your second function. You don't use va_arg(). Specifically;

void format_string(char *fmt,va_list argptr, char *formatted_string);


void debug_print(int dbg_lvl, char *fmt, ...) 
{    
 char formatted_string[MAX_FMT_SIZE];

 va_list argptr;
 va_start(argptr,fmt);
 format_string(fmt, argptr, formatted_string);
 va_end(argptr);
 fprintf(stdout, "%s",formatted_string);
}

There's no way of calling (eg) printf without knowing how many arguments you're passing to it, unless you want to get into naughty and non-portable tricks.

The generally used solution is to always provide an alternate form of vararg functions, so printf has vprintf which takes a va_list in place of the .... The ... versions are just wrappers around the va_list versions.

Though you can solve passing the formatter by storing it in local buffer first, but that needs stack and can sometime be issue to deal with. I tried following and it seems to work fine.

#include <stdarg.h>
#include <stdio.h>

void print(char const* fmt, ...)
{
    va_list arg;
    va_start(arg, fmt);
    vprintf(fmt, arg);
    va_end(arg);
}

void printFormatted(char const* fmt, va_list arg)
{
    vprintf(fmt, arg);
}

void showLog(int mdl, char const* type, ...)
{
    print("\nMDL: %d, TYPE: %s", mdl, type);

    va_list arg;
    va_start(arg, type);
    char const* fmt = va_arg(arg, char const*);
    printFormatted(fmt, arg);
    va_end(arg);
}

int main() 
{
    int x = 3, y = 6;
    showLog(1, "INF, ", "Value = %d, %d Looks Good! %s", x, y, "Infact Awesome!!");
    showLog(1, "ERR");
}

Hope this helps.

Short answer

/// logs all messages below this level, level 0 turns off LOG 
#ifndef LOG_LEVEL
#define LOG_LEVEL 5  // 0:off, 1:error, 2:warning, 3: info, 4: debug, 5:verbose
#endif
#define _LOG_FORMAT_SHORT(letter, format) "[" #letter "]: " format "\n"

/// short log
#define log_s(level, format, ...)     \                                                                                  
    if (level <= LOG_LEVEL)            \                                                                                     
    printf(_LOG_FORMAT_SHORT(level, format), ##__VA_ARGS__)

usage

log_s(1, "fatal error occurred");
log_s(3, "x=%d and name=%s",2, "ali");

output

[1]: fatal error occurred
[3]: x=2 and name=ali

log with file and line number

const char* _getFileName(const char* path)
{
    size_t i = 0;
    size_t pos = 0;
    char* p = (char*)path;
    while (*p) {
        i++;
        if (*p == '/' || *p == '\\') {
            pos = i;
        }
        p++;
    }
    return path + pos;
}

#define _LOG_FORMAT(letter, format)      \                                                                        
    "[" #letter "][%s:%u] %s(): " format "\n", _getFileName(__FILE__), __LINE__, __FUNCTION__

#ifndef LOG_LEVEL
#define LOG_LEVEL 5 // 0:off, 1:error, 2:warning, 3: info, 4: debug, 5:verbose
#endif

/// long log
#define log_l(level, format, ...)     \                                                                               
    if (level <= LOG_LEVEL)            \                                                                                         
    printf(_LOG_FORMAT(level, format), ##__VA_ARGS__)

usage

log_s(1, "fatal error occurred");
log_s(3, "x=%d and name=%s",2, "ali");

output

[1][test.cpp:97] main(): fatal error occurred
[3][test.cpp:98] main(): x=2 and name=ali

custom print function

you can write custom print function and pass ... args to it and it is also possible to combine this with methods above. source from here

int print_custom(const char* format, ...)
{
    static char loc_buf[64];
    char* temp = loc_buf;
    int len;
    va_list arg;
    va_list copy;
    va_start(arg, format);
    va_copy(copy, arg);
    len = vsnprintf(NULL, 0, format, arg);
    va_end(copy);
    if (len >= sizeof(loc_buf)) {
        temp = (char*)malloc(len + 1);
        if (temp == NULL) {
            return 0;
        }
    }
    vsnprintf(temp, len + 1, format, arg);
    printf(temp); // replace with any print function you want
    va_end(arg);
    if (len >= sizeof(loc_buf)) {
        free(temp);
    }
    return len;
}
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