Comment by dfawcus

> In 1979 the “standard practice in C of passing a large struct to a function” wasn’t just not standard practice, it didn’t exist!

Yes it did exist. It just wasn't mentioned in the original K&R book.

See this page of a memo from November 78, passing and returning structs was supported. When I learn C on a Unix system, there was a copy of this memo in the printed papers section.

https://www.nokia.com/bell-labs/about/dennis-m-ritchie/cchan...