c++ - __attribute__((format(printf, 1, 2))) for MSVC?

Question

With GCC, I can specify __attribute__((format(printf, 1, 2))) , telling the compiler that this function takes vararg parameters that are printf format specifiers.

This is very helpful in the cases where I wrap e.g. the vsprintf function family. I can have extern void log_error(const char *format, ...) __attribute__((format(printf, 1, 2)));

And whenever I call this function, gcc will check that the types and number of arguments conform to the given format specifiers as it would for printf, and issue a warning if not.

Does the Microsoft C/C++ compiler have anything similar ?

Answer 1

Using SAL Annotations you can use _Printf_format_string_ (as of VS2k8 or VS2k10) or __format_string (for VS2k5):

#undef FORMAT_STRING
#if _MSC_VER >= 1400
# include <sal.h>
# if _MSC_VER > 1400
#  define FORMAT_STRING(p) _Printf_format_string_ p
# else
#  define FORMAT_STRING(p) __format_string p
# endif /* FORMAT_STRING */
#else
# define FORMAT_STRING(p) p
#endif /* _MSC_VER */

/* use /analyze or _USE_ATTRIBUTES_FOR_SAL for checking */
extern void log_error(FORMAT_STRING(const char* format), ...);