Today Matt posted a half-joking twit about the acceptable number of arguments that can be passed to a function…
I took the challenge VERY SERIOUSLY and decided to investigate.
In my old post I shared my collections of API prototypes that I had extracted from various Microsoft documentation and other sources over the years; so my task was really easy — analyze this data and find the best candidate APIs that meet the criteria.
I first looked at 2004-2007_apis.zip file that included the number of arguments in one of the columns. After merging all this data into a single file, loading it to Excel, and sorting it in a descending order by the number of arguments I immediately got my first candidate:
It takes 17 arguments :-O
I then looked at 2013_apis.zip file as well — this time I had to write a simple script to parse the file and count number of arguments for each function and then save the results to a file. Same as before, I then loaded it to Excel, sored it in a descending order by the number of arguments and now I had my final candidate:
– it takes 21 arguments 🙂
Now, there may be other functions that take even more arguments as an input, but I bet they are quite rare. If you find one tough, please let me know and I will update this post.
Bonus
The longest api name I have ever encountered is this (1077 characters):
- ZN5boost12accumulators6detail14build_acc_listINS_6fusion12mpl_iteratorINS_3mpl6v_iterINS5_6v_itemINS1_19accumulator_wrapperINS0_4impl18lazy_variance_implIdNS0_3tag4meanEEENSB_13lazy_varianceEEENS7_INS8_INS9_11moment_implIN4mpl_4int_ILi2EEEdEENSB_6momentILi2EEEEENS7_INS8_INS9_11median_implIdEENSB_6medianEEENS7_INS8_INS9_22p_square_quantile_implIdNS0_10for_medianEEENSB_28p_square_quantile_for_medianEEENS7_INS8_INS9_8max_implIdEENSB_3maxEEENS7_INS8_INS9_9mean_implIdNSB_3sumEEESC_EENS7_INS8_INS9_8sum_implIdNSB_6sampleEEES12_EENS7_INS8_INS9_10count_implENSB_5countEEENS7_INS8_INS9_8min_implIdEENSB_3minEEENS5_7vector0INSH_2naEEELi0EEELi0EEELi0EEELi0EEELi0EEELi0EEELi0EEELi0EEELi0EEELl0EEEEENS4_INS6_IS1R_Ll9EEEEELb0EE4callINS_9parameter3aux8arg_listINS1Z_15tagged_argumentINSB_11accumulatorENS0_15accumulator_setIdNS0_5statsIS1E_SC_SZ_SQ_SE_S1H_S1H_S1H_S1H_S1H_S1H_S1H_S1H_S1H_S1H_S1H_S1H_S1H_S1H_S1H_EEvEEEENS1Z_14empty_arg_listEEEEENS3_4consIS1F_NS2A_IS1B_NS2A_IS18_NS2A_IS14_NS2A_IS10_NS2A_ISW_NS2A_ISR_NS2A_ISN_NS2A_ISF_NS3_3nilEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERKT_RKS1T_RKS1V
it’s from the sample:
- 8005F35D2C2642B33ADB77CBD100BF64CC7DB611FA789AE18BFFF3F91B26AB40_4E8BA4874E4D7B99C0BDF31EFBB4051DCDB2F29D
Additionally, the API name that includes the most words in it (11) is:
- AccessCheckByTypeResultListAndAuditAlarmByHandle