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Yes, I know that "cdecl" is the name of a prominent calling convention, so please don't explain calling conventions to me. What I'm asking is what the abbreviation (?) "cdecl" actually stands for. I think it's a poor naming choice, because at first sight it reminds one of "C declarator" (a rather unique syntactic aspect of C). In fact, there is a program called cdecl whose sole purpose is to decipher C declarators. But the C declarator syntax has absolutely nothing to do with calling conventions as far as I can tell.
Simplified version: "stdcall" stands for "standard calling convention". What does "cdecl" stand for?
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The __cdecl function specifier (C++ only) The __cdecl keyword instructs the compiler to read and write a parameter list by using C linkage conventions. To set the __cdecl calling convention for a function, place the linkage keyword immediately before the function name or at the beginning of the declarator.
In CDECL arguments are pushed onto the stack in revers order, the caller clears the stack and result is returned via processor registry (later I will call it "register A"). In STDCALL there is one difference, the caller doeasn't clear the stack, the calle do. You are asking which one is faster.
The __fastcall calling convention specifies that arguments to functions are to be passed in registers, when possible. This calling convention only applies to the x86 architecture.
__stdcall is a calling convention: a way of determining how parameters are passed to a function (on the stack or in registers) and who is responsible for cleaning up after the function returns (the caller or the callee).
It comes from C function that was declared (in contrast to a C function that was not declared which was common in K&R C).
At the time it was coexisting with pascal calling convention (wher the callee cleared the stack), so it kind of made sense to call it after the programming language.
Everything you might ever want to know about calling conventions.
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You're reading too much into this. It stands for the calling convention of the implementation for calling C functions in general (but especially important with varargs).
It doesn't have to be an abbreviation for something that combines "C" and "declaration"; names are just names, especially in programming. Mnemonics help, but even though "malloc" means "allocate memory", it has additional meaning that we know and attach to it; "alloca" also "allocates memory", for example.
Or take "struct" which "means" a "structure", but "structure" is so generic by itself that without the meaning we attach subconsciously to "struct" we would be hopelessly lost – as new programmers still learning the terminology are often lost.
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