neitzel@infbs.UUCP (06/30/87)
How would you implement generic functions/data types in C ?
Has someone already written some helpful packages going in
such a direction ?
Martin Neitzel
...!mcvax!unido!infbs!neitzel
/**** Skip the rest, if you aren't interested in this topic ****/
I mean something to the effect of:
#include "generic_stack.h"
#define STACKTYPE StackOfFoobar
#define STACK_ELEMTYPE struct foobar *
generic_fn_create_stack ( new_foobar_stack )
generic_fn_pop (pop_one_foobar)
...
main()
{
StackOfFoobar first_stack;
first_stack = new_foobar_stack();
...
I for one have a such a model working, it even supports conditional
generation of "foo_stack.h" vs. "foo_stack.c". The aim of this note
is to stir up some discussion about such concepts. Sorry, if this
repeats older stuff...
I think ADA's (ok ok...: (tm)DoD) GENERICS are not too difficult
to imitate. Maybe you can only achieve a subset of all its facilities,
but that wouldn't hurt too much.
I know that standard UNIX (yet another (tm)) tools like "m4", "sed"
and "awk" would fit better to this task, but please TRY at least
one approach with the mere C-preprocessor. However, any contributions
are welcome.
Last not least: I'm interested in generics generating "source level
code", that is (quite) strongly typed. In other words, I don't
mean "general" library routines like "malloc()" or "tsearch()".