death of nargs(3)

[David Sherman]

I thought I really needed nargs() when I moved our CAI applications
from the PDP-11/23 development machine to this Perkin-Elmer 3220
(also running v7) in 1984.  Then I started getting advice from
the PE experts on the net, who explained why it couldn't be done
(most notably because the first argument is stored in space that's
used anyway, so 0 and 1 argument can't be distinguished).  I took
a look at all the places I used nargs, and found that they weren't
that hard to rewrite portably.  Whether you pass an arg count,
use a special flag as first argument (this was for functions called
from signal traps) or terminate the arguments with 0, it can usually
be done.

David Sherman
The Law Society of Upper Canada
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