Call Convention

Stdcall pushes the argument from right to left onto the stack. The called function is responsible to remove the parameters passed in by decrementing the esp by the length of the parameters. Cdecl call convention differs from Stdcall by having the calling function to remove the argument passed from the stack. Stdcall is preferred because the clean up is done one place (no mater how many times it is being called), which is simpler. Cdecl is used for C/C++ because they support variable number of parameters for function call. As the called function will not know the number of parameters beforehand, the clean up has to be performed by the calling function instead.

Linker generates special name for different call conventions. For Stdcall, function name will be prefixed by "_" and appended by "@", follow by the number of bytes of stack space required. For Cdecl, function name is prefixed by "_".

Fastcall uses ecx and edx to pass the first 2 argument. Clean up is by the called function, similar to Stdcall. Function name is prefixed by "@", appended by "@" and followed by the number of bytes of stack space required.

Thiscall passes this point via exc and the rest of arguments on the stack. Clean up is by called function.