variadic

English

WOTD – 10 September 2011

Etymology

variable +‎ -adic

Pronunciation

• (US) IPA^(key): /vɛɹiˈædɪk/
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /vɛəɹiˈædɪk/
• Rhymes: -ædɪk

Adjective

variadic (not comparable)

1. (computing, mathematics, linguistics) Taking a variable number of arguments; especially, taking arbitrarily many arguments.
   • 1983, Alan Bundy, The Computer Modelling of Mathematical Reasoning,^[1] Academic Press, page 48:

     There are some functions and predicates which we tend to think of as being able to take any number of parameters – of being of variable arity or variadic.

   • 2004, François Récanati, Literal Meaning, Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 109:

     The variadic functions that increase the valence of the input relation through the addition of a circumstance to the set of its argument-roles can be represented by means of an operator (or rather, a family of operators) ‘Circ’.

   • 2006, Nils M. Holm, Sketchy LISP: An Introduction to Functional Programming in Scheme, Second Edition, Lulu.com, →ISBN:

     page 53: However, the real max procedure of Scheme is a variadic procedure, which means that it accepts any positive number of arguments: ¶ (max 5 1 3 8 9 7 2 6 4) => 9

     page 54: Because (non-primitive) procedures are created using lambda, there must be a way to create variadic lambda functions, too.

   C's printf is one of the most widely used variadic functions.

Translations

taking a variable number of arguments

• Finnish: variadinen, variadic-
• French: variadique (fr)
• German: variadisch

• Russian: принимающий переменное число́ параметров (prinimajuščij peremennoje čisló parametrov)
• Spanish: variádico m