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Rules and Limitations for Naked Functions

Microsoft Specific

The following rules and limitations apply to naked functions:

  • The return statement is not permitted.

  • Structured Exception Handling and C++ Exception Handling constructs are not permitted because they must unwind across the stack frame.

  • For the same reason, any form of setjmp is prohibited.

  • Use of the _alloca function is prohibited.

  • To ensure that no initialization code for local variables appears before the prolog sequence, initialized local variables are not permitted at function scope. In particular, the declaration of C++ objects is not permitted at function scope. There may, however, be initialized data in a nested scope.

  • Frame pointer optimization (the /Oy compiler option) is not recommended, but it is automatically suppressed for a naked function.

  • You cannot declare C++ class objects at the function lexical scope. You can, however, declare objects in a nested block.

  • The naked keyword is ignored when compiling with /clr.

  • For __fastcall naked functions, whenever there is a reference in C/C++ code to one of the register arguments, the prolog code should store the values of that register into the stack location for that variable. For example:

// nkdfastcl.cpp
// compile with: /c
// processor: x86
__declspec(naked) int __fastcall  power(int i, int j) {
   // calculates i^j, assumes that j >= 0

   // prolog
   __asm {
      push ebp
      mov ebp, esp
      sub esp, __LOCAL_SIZE
     // store ECX and EDX into stack locations allocated for i and j
     mov i, ecx
     mov j, edx
   }

   {
      int k = 1;   // return value
      while (j-- > 0) 
         k *= i;
      __asm { 
         mov eax, k 
      };
   }

   // epilog
   __asm {
      mov esp, ebp
      pop ebp
      ret
   }
}

See Also

Reference

Naked Function Calls