Sage-Tips

What is the purpose of the calling convention?

The calling convention states how arguments (parameters) are passed to a function and how the caller receives a return value. Amont others, the convention regulates if those values are passed via CPU registers and/or via the stack and which registers are guaranteed to preserve their values accross function calls.

What calling convention does C++ use?

__cdecl is the default calling convention for C and C++ programs. Because the stack is cleaned up by the caller, it can do vararg functions. The __cdecl calling convention creates larger executables than __stdcall, because it requires each function call to include stack cleanup code.

What does cdecl mean in C?

C declaration
The cdecl (which stands for C declaration) is a calling convention that originates from Microsoft’s compiler for the C programming language and is used by many C compilers for the x86 architecture. In cdecl, subroutine arguments are passed on the stack.

What is callee and caller?

As nouns the difference between callee and caller is that callee is (telephony) the person who is called by the caller (on the telephone) while caller is the person who made a telephone call.

What does RETQ do in assembly?

The retq instruction pops the return address from the stack into the destination \%rip , thus resuming at the saved return address.

What are calling conventions?

There are three major calling conventions that are used with the C language on 32-bit x86 processors: STDCALL, CDECL, and FASTCALL. In addition, there is another calling convention typically used with C++: THISCALL. There are other calling conventions as well, including PASCAL and FORTRAN conventions, among others.

What is EBP register?

A frame pointer (the ebp register on intel x86 architectures, rbp on 64-bit architectures) contains the base address of the function’s frame. The code to access local variables within a function is generated in terms of offsets to the frame pointer.

What is a calling method?

The calling method is the method that contains the actual call. The called method is the method being called. They are different. They are also called the Caller and the Callee methods. For example int caller(){ int x=callee(); } int callee(){ return 5; }

What is calling convention in C++?

A calling convention governs how functions on a particular architecture and operating system interact. This includes rules about includes how function arguments are placed, where return values go, what registers functions may use, how they may allocate local variables, and so forth.

What is calling convention in operating system?

Calling convention A calling conventiongoverns how functions on a particular architecture and operating system interact. This includes rules about includes how function arguments are placed, where return values go, what registers functions may use, how they may allocate local variables, and so forth.

What is the calling convention for printf in C?

Standard calling convention (__stdcall) On the other hand, functions with the variable number of arguments (like printf ()) must use __cdecl, because only the caller knows the number of arguments in each function call; therefore only the caller can perform the stack cleanup.

The calling convention gives callers and callees certain guarantees and responsibilities about the values of registers across function calls. Function implementations may expect these guarantees to hold, and must work to fulfill their responsibilities.