passing variable numbers of arguments

[Guy Harris]

 >>                                        Wouldn't it have been reasonable for
 >> the standard to specify that the compiler should enable the called function
 >> to determine the number of parameters that were passed, by automatically
 >> passing this information as a first implicit parameter, for example?
 >
...
 >For one thing, that would slow down every call a little.

To be fair, it wouldn't have to slow *every* call down, just calls to
functions for which a prototype is in scope that specifies that it is a
varargs function....