C Template Library

C TEMPLATE LIBRARY (CTL)

CTL is a fast compiling, type safe, header only, template-like library for ISO C99.

Motivation

CTL aims to improve C99 developer productivity by implementing the following STL containers in ISO C99:

deq.h = std::deque
lst.h = std::list
pqu.h = std::priority_queue
que.h = std::queue
set.h = std::set
stk.h = std::stack
str.h = std::string
vec.h = std::vector

Use

Configure a CTL container with a built-in or typedef type T.

#include <stdio.h>

#define P
#define T int
#include <vec.h>

int compare(int* a, int* b) { return *b < *a; }

int main(void)
{
    vec_int a = vec_int_init();
    vec_int_push_back(&a, 9);
    vec_int_push_back(&a, 1);
    vec_int_push_back(&a, 8);
    vec_int_push_back(&a, 3);
    vec_int_push_back(&a, 4);
    vec_int_sort(&a, compare);
    foreach(vec_int, &a, it,
        printf("%d\n", *it.ref);
    )
    vec_int_free(&a);
}

Definition P states type T is Plain Old Data (POD).

To compile, include the ctl directory:

For a much more thorough getting started guide, see the wiki: https://github.com/glouw/ctl/wiki

Memory Ownership

Types with memory ownership require definition P be omitted, and require function declarations for the C++ equivalent of the destructor and copy constructor, prior to the inclusion of the container:

typedef struct { ... } type;
void type_free(type*);
type type_copy(type*);
#define T type
#include <vec.h>

Forgetting a declaration will print a human-readable error message:

tests/test_c99.c:11:11: error: ‘type_free’ undeclared (first use in this function)
   11 | #define T type

Performance

CTL performance is presented in solid colors, and STL in dotted colors, for template type T as type int for all measurements.

Omitted from these performance measurements are que.h, stk.h, and str.h, as their performance characteristics can be inferred from deq.h, and vec.h, respectively.

Note, CTL strings do not support short strings.

Running Tests

To run all functional tests, run:

To compile examples, run:

To generate performance graphs, run:

sh gen_images.sh
# Graphing requires python3 and the Plotly family of libraries via pip3.

To do all of the above in one step, run:

For maintaining CTL, a container templated to type int can be outputted to stdout by running make on the container name, eg:

make deq
make lst
make pqu
make que
make set
make stk
make str
make vec

Other

STL std::map will not be implemented in CTL because maps only provide slight syntactic improvements over sets.

STL std::unordered_map and std::unordered_set will not be implemented in CTL because ordered containers are preferred, even at the cost of performance.

STL variants of multi-sets and multi-maps will not be implemented because similar behaviour can be implemented as an amalgamation of a set and lst.

Base Implementation Details

vec.h: See `realloc`.
deq.h: Paged `realloc`.
lst.h: Doubly linked list.
set.h: Red black tree.

Acknowledgements

Thank you github.com/kully/ for the Plotly code, and thank you for the general review.

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