It was thus said that the Great Dave Dunfield once stated: Well ... one could do: void print_arg(int *aryp,size_t n) { static const char text[] = ",%u"; printf(text+1,*aryp++); while(--n) { printf(text,*aryp++); } putchar('\n'); } Which I stuffed through GCC 2.7.2.3 (admittedly not a recent version of GCC) using the following command line: % gcc -S -O2 -fomit-frame-pointer t.c And got the following (cleaned up): .section rodata text .text ",%u" .section code print_arg push esi push ebx mov esi,[esp + 12] mov ebx,[esp + 16] push dword ptr [esi] add esi,4 push offset text + 1 jmps .L11 .L9 push dword ptr [esi] add esi,4 push offset text .L11 call printf add esp,8 dec ebx jne .L9 push dword $_IO_stdout push dword 10 call _IO_putc add esp,8 pop ebx pop esi ret Surprised me! A single call to printf(). Not bad---then again, GCC had been in development for quite a long time. And the printf() stack frame is no different from any other C stack frame (in declaration yes, but not in how it works). Oh dear, we are, aren't we? -spc (And the assembly output has one unconditional GOTO and one conditional GOTO ... but who's counting?)