Passing va_list to other functions - c

Question

I have been trying to pass variable arguments to other function in C but it is producing inconsistent result in different runtime environment as well as in different runs in same environment:
int main()
{
int result = myprintf("Something \n %d", 9);
return result;
}
int myprintf(const char *format, ...){
printf("Something \n %d", 9);
printf("\n");
va_list args;
va_start(args, format);
int result = printf(format,args);
printf("\n");
va_end(args);
return result;
}
And the result produced is:
WWW.FIRMCODES.COM
9
WWW.FIRMCODES.COM
438656664
I could not find the reason for "438656664".

Answer 1

You cannot pass the variadic arguments to a variadic function. Instead, you must call a function that takes a va_list as argument. The standard library provides variants of printf and scanf that take a va_list; their names have the prefix v.
Your example should look like:
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <stdarg.h>
int printfln(const char *format, ...)
{
int result;
va_list args;
va_start(args, format);
result = vprintf(format, args);
printf("\n");
va_end(args);
return result;
}
int main()
{
int result = printfln("Something \n %d", 9);
printf("(%d)\n", result);
return 0;
}
There are some gotchas, for example when you want to call two v... function for printing to the screen and a log file: The v... function may exhaust the va_list, so you must pass in a fresh one to each call if your code should be portable.

Answer 2

For the C++ fellow also reading this. You can actually do it using pack expansion without using vprintf.
This trick is quite handy when you need to wrap a method that takes the ellipsis (...)
and not a va_list.
For instance:
template <class ... Args>
void foo(const char *format, Args ... args)
{
printf(format, args...);
}
Here class ... Args is template parameter pack, Args ... args is function parameter pack, and args... is function parameter pack expansion.

Answer 3

Alternatively, you can simply use a wrapper macro:
#include <stdio.h>
#define myprintf(fmt, ...) ( printf("Something \n %d\n", 9), printf(fmt, __VA_ARGS__) )
int main (void)
{
int result = myprintf("Something \n %d\n", 9);
printf("%d\n", result);
}
Note the use of the comma operator to preserve the returned value of the right-hand printf call to the caller.
This isn't any less type safe than the (equally dangerous) stdarg.h variadic functions.

Answer 4

Just a simple demonstration and worked example with "a fresh one va_list" when you need to print/output-as-string a template string like constexpr const char* example = R"(template "%s")"; .
std::string print_templ(const char* format, ...)
{
va_list args1;
va_start(args1, format);
va_list args2;
va_copy(args2, args1);
std::vector<char> str(std::vsnprintf(nullptr, 0, format, args1) + 1);
va_end(args1);
const int ret = std::vsnprintf(str.data(), str.size(), format, args2);
va_end(args2);
return std::string(str.begin(), str.begin()+ret);
}