Windows Calling convention Summary

Default is __cdecl

• caller pushes parms on stack
• calls function
• caller pops parms off stack
• The decorated name in windows just has a leading underscore "_".

Alternative is __stdcal

• also known as WINAPI and PASCAL
• WIN32 uses this convention, hence WINAPI
• callee pops parms off stack.  Results in smaller code since if a program calls a routine ten times the stack pop code is only once in the called function and not in each of the ten places it is used.
• Routines with variable arguments are hard to clean up. ie. printf.
• The decorated name has "_" prefix and a "@n" postfix.  "n" is a number saying how many bytes are used to encode the function parameters.

Other alternative is __fastcall

• Uses some registers to pass parameters.
• Time used to save registers cuts down on benefits.