Good stuff. void* in itself is great for generics. C does support a templating system, like C++, with a little (reasonable) preprocessor abuse. It gives great cache contiguous results: https://www.github.com/glouw/ctl
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Common libraries and data structures for C
41–50 of 148 posts
Re: Common libraries and data structures for C
#42What I find frustrating when I use C instead of C# is that I have to hunt for libraries and include them in the project or write my own implementation, even for most popular things like data structures, search algorithms, sorting algorithms, serialization, http calls. Whereas in C# the framework will provide them for me. If something is not in the standard library, I can use a directive or just reference a method fro…
>Go and Rust are similar in that aspect.
I think this poses a subtle security risk about namespacing. Who authorizes these packages? Who audits these repositories?
When you use a C/C++ library, there is obvious accountability. You know who maintains the repository (usually your distribution) or you explicitly copy someone elses code as a subrepository.
Re: Common libraries and data structures for C
#43The lengths people will go to not use C++ is staggering.
I see nothing wrong in having a preference if both C and C++ can be used for the same project and if the development speed is roughly the same.
Re: Common libraries and data structures for C
#44For people advocating use of C++ instead of C, keep in mind there are several platforms (mostly embedded) that only support C and not C++. Also there are many projects that make use of C only. If C++ is available, I agree one should use it, however that is not always the choice.
Embedded devices really opened my eyes to this world. What a fool I was using malloc on my first Arduino project.
Re: Common libraries and data structures for C
#45As I got more into C programming, I started looking for data structure libraries. Found a few [0]. Also evaluated sc, but it had too much pre-processor magic for my taste. It also bundles random "stuff" like a URI parser, a thread abstraction, etc. Eventually I rolled my own [1] more focused library. It's basic and portable. 0: https://begriffs.com/posts/2020-08-31-portable-stable-softwa... 1: https://github.com/begr…
I think it's common for C programmers to roll their own. I did the same [0].
I went pretty deep into composable C templates to build mine so it's more powerful than most. The containers can handle non-bitwise-movable types with full C++-style lifecycle functions and such, and the sort algorithms can handle dynamic and non-contiguous arrays (they are powerful enough to implement qsort() [1], which is more than I can say for any other C sort templates I've seen.) My reasoning for the complexity at the time was that any powerful container library is going to be reasonably complex in implementation (as anyone who's looked at STL source code knows), so it just needs to be encapsulated behind a good interface.
I'm not so sure that's true anymore. These sorts of simpler libraries like the one linked here definitely seem to be more popular among C programmers. I think if people are using C, it's not just the C++ language complexity they want to get away from, but also the implementation complexity of libraries and such. There's a balance to be had for sure, and I think the balance varies from person to person, which is why no library has emerged as the de facto standard for containers in C.
[0]: https://github.com/ludocode/pottery
[1]: https://github.com/ludocode/pottery/tree/develop/util/potter...
Re: Common libraries and data structures for C
#46I'm not a C developer, nor have I ever been interested in developing with it. From my perspective, it seems like a massive time drain and non-productive use of my time. Just a few points: - Tooling seems all over the place (build system, package management) - Having to roll your own trivial functions / types (tooling may play into this) - Versioning is confusing (C99, C11, ???) The only advantage I see would be in em…
What do you mean by 'time drain'? Do you know how much time it would take you to port your assembly code from x86 to ARM? And then when a new CPU comes out, you've got to rewrite all that assembly code again. Now that's a time drain. You could write your code once in C, and compile it for any CPU at this point. That's massive amount of your time saved. Again, what do you mean by 'time drain'? Do you know how many hum…
>C exists to write fast programs, not to write programs fast.
What if you want to write fast programs fast?
Also, while not useful for command line tools or for small run once programs, if the software is running continuously or its size is past a certain threshold, it might pay off to use .NET or Java since the speed is not that far of from C.
https://benchmarksgame-team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame/...
https://benchmarksgame-team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame/...
Re: Common libraries and data structures for C
#47As I got more into C programming, I started looking for data structure libraries. Found a few [0]. Also evaluated sc, but it had too much pre-processor magic for my taste. It also bundles random "stuff" like a URI parser, a thread abstraction, etc. Eventually I rolled my own [1] more focused library. It's basic and portable. 0: https://begriffs.com/posts/2020-08-31-portable-stable-softwa... 1: https://github.com/begr…
Did you look at glib? It has quite a lot of features and is pretty easy to use.
Re: Common libraries and data structures for C
#48I work in C++ daily and there is something about the simple-ness of C that I love. You get out of magical hell that is templates and return to simple flat-functions and macros.
D is more appealing and powerful, and if you are familiar with C/C++ there's not much of a learning curve - https://dlang.org/overview.html
Re: Common libraries and data structures for C
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
C is supposely a language which it is reasonable to write a compiler for and in order to get a reasonable hardware ISA abstraction. Don't worry, the ISO working groups are making sure that it won't last and soon writting a C compiler will become a nightmare like what they did for c++ (C23 is seriously scary). Instead they should fix it: remove _Generic, typeof, etc which have nothing to do there, and make sure writti…
I agree C23 is scary (1000+ new functions???), but your complaint seems a bit misplaced. For example `typeof` is a GNU extension, and removing `typedef` will instantly break virtually everything (which is not only used to remove `struct`/`union`/`enum` from the name). And a reasonable C compiler can only do a very limited amount of optimization, which precludes a majority of current C uses.
It looks like typeof() is being added it C23, so his complaint about it sort of makes sense.
I say "sort of" because if he's truly concerned about the effort involved in creating independent implementations, then obviously he should be evaluating features by the difficulty involved in implementing them. typedef and typeof are absolutely trivial to implement [0] [1]. typedef just creates type aliases and typeof is very similar to sizeof.
Also, I'm not sure what 1000 functions you're referring to, but most functions being added are already in POSIX and already exist in a huge number of independent libc implementations. There are dozens of POSIX libcs, including at least 5 totally independent implementations for Linux alone that are still fully maintained and under active development.
[0]: typeof: https://github.com/rui314/chibicc/commit/7d80a5136d1b2926dd0...
[1]: typedef: https://github.com/rui314/chibicc/commit/a6b82da1ae9eefa44da...
Re: Common libraries and data structures for C
#50As I got more into C programming, I started looking for data structure libraries. Found a few [0]. Also evaluated sc, but it had too much pre-processor magic for my taste. It also bundles random "stuff" like a URI parser, a thread abstraction, etc. Eventually I rolled my own [1] more focused library. It's basic and portable. 0: https://begriffs.com/posts/2020-08-31-portable-stable-softwa... 1: https://github.com/begr…
I think it's common for C programmers to roll their own. I did the same [0]. I went pretty deep into composable C templates to build mine so it's more powerful than most. The containers can handle non-bitwise-movable types with full C++-style lifecycle functions and such, and the sort algorithms can handle dynamic and non-contiguous arrays (they are powerful enough to implement qsort() [1], which is more than I can s…
Thanks for sharing! This looks like a very well designed container library.