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copied!<p>I'd go more radical than what people have suggested so far, but maybe it is too much for you. (The 'inline' keyword is C99; you can omit it without much consequence if you code to C89.)</p> <pre><code>/* ** These could be omitted - unless you get still more radical and create ** the format strings at run-time, so you can adapt the %-24s to the ** longest tag you actually have. Plus, with the strings all here, when ** you change the length from 24 to 30, you are less likely to overlook one! */ static const char fmt_int[] = "%-24s [%d]\n"; static const char fmt_long[] = "%-24s [%ld]\n"; static const char fmt_str[] = "%-24s [%s]\n"; /* Plausible extra ... */ static inline void print_long(FILE *fp, const char *tag, long value) { fprintf(fp, fmt_long, tag, value); } static inline void print_int(FILE *fp, const char *tag, int value) { fprintf(fp, fmt_int, tag, value); } static inline void print_str(FILE *fp, const char *tag, const char *value) { fprintf(fp, fmt_str, tag, value); } static void dump_data(FILE *fp, const serial_info_t *info) { dump_long("Starting serial number", info->start_int_idx); dump_int( "Current Serial number", info->current_int_idx); /* ... and similar ... */ } </code></pre> <p>Then the calling code would call <code>dump_data()</code> once (with argument <code>stdout</code>) for options 1, 2, 3 and twice (once with <code>stdout</code>, once with file pointer for output file) for option 4.</p> <p>If the number of parameters got truly huge (into the multiple hundreds), I'd even go as far as to consider a data structure which encoded type and offset information (<code>offsetof</code> from <code><stddef.h></code>) and pointers to functions and such like, so that there would be just a loop in <code>dump_data()</code> iterating over a structure which encodes all the necessary information.</p> <p>You could also simplify life by using the same basic integer type (<code>long</code> in your example) for all the integer members of the data structure.</p> <p>Fred Brooks in "Mythical Man Month" - a book well worth reading if you've not already done so, but make sure you read the Twentieth Anniversary edition - says in Chapter 9:</p> <blockquote> <p>Show me your flowcharts [code] and conceal your tables [data structures], and I shall continue to be mystified. Show me your tables, and I won't usually need your flowcharts; they'll be obvious.</p> </blockquote> <p>A table-driven version of this code could end up saving space, as well as frustration when having to change a hundred related functions in the same way whereas a simple change in the tabular data could have fixed the whole lot.</p>

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