Higher-level C

This is my series of posts on C. The aim is to document techniques for writing medium- to high-level programs.  Modern C programming has moved away from the focus in absolute efficiency, and there are many large programs solving problems where abstraction is necessary.  Efficiency is still important; but it’s often satisfactory to run 20% slower if it means the code is easier to maintain!

As I write posts I’ll add them to this brief table of contents. You can also see a list of the posts in the category.

Note that I do not get a lot of feedback before posting. I would be interested in any criticism, and am happy to expand a post if a reader suggests it; or to correct a post where an error is pointed out to me. :-)

Introduction

• The initial post on Higher-level C in which I lament the scarcity of C programming books.

Objects in C

• The basic technique of using a struct to create a user-defined type (a class).
• How to encapsulate methods with data.
• And how to use method polymorphism using function pointers.

Code organisation

• Simulating namespaces with structs.

Possibly forthcoming

Memory Management: malloc/free; Problem of computing optimal destruction of object; Pools; GC, E.g. Beohm; Pre-allocated and stack-based memory

Data structures: Strings; Collections; Generic data structures; Type safety; polymorphism.

Classes: Common base object; Interfaces; Multiple-inheritance (possible?); Multiple-interface implementation (possible?)

Functional programming: Laziness; Closures; Callbacks

Introspection and reflection: E.g. Printing an object

Exception handling: setjmp/longjmp; Exception as return value; Macro misuse

Code organisation: Dependency Injection