Jonathan Stone <jonathan@dsg.stanford.edu> writes:
>It's also the case that using the ellipsis in a prototype can result
>in a less-efficient argument-passing sequence at run-time, on some
>architectures.
it's also the case that *not* using prototypes for function definitions
with a fixed-length/type parameter list can make a compiler uses
inefficient but general stack-based calling sequences. Yes it is known that
variable arguments may exact a time/space penalty compared to the
optimizations otherwise possible, but I'd bet there are considerably fewer
uses of functions with variable arguments...

cheers,
Danny Thomas

PS ANSI C requires the use of ellipsis prototype *definitions* for all
functions with variable arguments. I suspect gcc is tolerant of this for
pragmatic reasons.