Re: must use gcc builtin?

["James K. Lowden" <jklowden%schemamania.org@localhost>]

On Wed, 22 Feb 2012 05:43:13 +0100
Joerg Sonnenberger <joerg%britannica.bec.de@localhost> wrote:

> > I can't #undef __GNUC__.  Do we really want to require the use of
> > builtins?  I'd like a knob to compile idiomatic C, especially
> > *good* idiomatic C.   
> 
> Yes, we really want to require the builtins for stdarg.h. Depending on
> the architecture, it is not even possible to write pure C code to do
> stdarg.h handling.

But for most architectures it *is* possible, and to *require* builtins
is to prevent reasonable code from compiling.  

Pure C isn't the point, anyway, is it?  The ISO C standard requires
that the stdarg macros behave in a particular way.  It doesn't say they
have to be written in C.  

I would be interested to know more about such an architecture, though.
It's hard for me to see what stdarg does that printf doesn't.  

--jkl