Show HN: Convenient Containers – ergonomic generics in C

2 points by JacksonAllan 5 hours ago

Hello Hacker News :)

I'd like to share my C generic data-structure library Convenient Containers (CC). The library's main advantages are summarized in the Rationale section of its README.[1] In short, using some novel techniques, the library is able to provide a range of fully typesafe data structures with a generic API agnostic to both container type and data types, without requiring the user to make any boilerplate pre-declarations for every container/data type combination. In other words, CC containers look and function much like containers in languages with native support for generics:

  #include <stdio.h>
  #include "cc.h"
  
  int main( void )
  {
    vec( int ) our_vec;
    init( &our_vec );
    push( &our_vec, 5 );
    printf( "%d\n", *get( &our_vec, 0 ) );
    cleanup( &our_vec );
  
    map( int, float ) our_map;
    init( &our_map );
    insert( &our_map, 5, 0.5f );
    printf( "%f\n", *get( &our_map, 5 ) );
    cleanup( &our_map );
  }

Of course, performance is also important. To this end, CC's hash tables (i.e. its maps and sets) have performed well in benchmarks both by me[2] and by others.[3] Its red-black trees (i.e. its ordered maps and sets) have also been benchmarked and proven to perform on par with their C++ Standard Library counterparts.[4]

Some of the techniques upon which CC relies are explained briefly in its FAQ[5] and more thoroughly in a series of Reddit comments that I made back when the library was first released.[6] I am working on a series of articles to describe these techniques more systematically, the first of which I published earlier.[7]

Thanks for reading!

[1] https://github.com/JacksonAllan/CC#rationale

[2] https://jacksonallan.github.io/c_cpp_hash_tables_benchmark/

[3] https://gist.github.com/attractivechaos/6815764c213f38802227...

[4] https://github.com/JacksonAllan/CC/releases/tag/v1.3.0

[5] https://github.com/JacksonAllan/CC?tab=readme-ov-file#how-do...

[6] https://www.reddit.com/r/C_Programming/comments/zvubfb/comme...

[7] https://github.com/JacksonAllan/CC/blob/main/articles/Better...