How one can include his/her own programming functions to standard C (ANSI C) library? And any one who is learning or working on C language able to use those functions anywhere anytime, no need of development in general.
Example : someone developed function named "FunFun()" and assume it does fantastic work for most programmers. so how anyone can access this "FunFun" function without developing and just including standard library?
The sane way to approach it would be to develop a 3rd party library and make it available over the internet through open source, Github etc.
The GNU C dialect is one such example, which is a collection of non-standard compiler extensions used by the GCC compiler. One could join the GCC open source group and try to get the new function added there. It would still not be standard library C, but the GCC extensions are often an inspiration to the C standard and several of them (designated initializers, flexible array members, anonymous struct/union etc) have been adopted into the language itself with the C99 and C11 standards. One of the purposes for GNU C is actually to serve as an experimental playground where new languages features can be tried out live.
If you truly wish to add a new function to the actual C standard library, you would have to join the ISO working group and convince them that the function should be added to the language. Or alternatively find a member of the committee and convince them to speak in favour of the new function.
All this of course assuming you are a C programming veteran, or otherwise nobody will likely take you seriously.
Your question can't be answered because it's based on several wrong assumptions.
Things like stdlib.h are not libraries. They are header files intended to be included in your program. Including means the contents are literally pasted into your program at the point of inclusion before the actual compilation happens. They are typically used for declaring functions, types, global variables etc a library provides. The actual library is then linked against after compilation.
There's no such thing as the C library as well as there's no such thing as the C compiler. c is a language that is specified in an open standard (if you're interested, here's the last draft of the latest standard version C11). There are many actual implementations and a complete implementation consists of at least a compiler and a standard library. You can of course implement your own standard library. It's a lot of work to have it really conform to the standard (you would have to implement printf() and scanf() correctly, for example). With your own standard library, you can also include your own extensions, but this would only mean people using your standard library (instead of e.g. glibc on a GNU system) could directly use them.
For having a function available on any implementation of C, it would be necessary to have the C Standard specify it. You won't get a new function in the standard without some very good reasoning.
So if you want to make your own function available to others, do what everyone does and just implement it in your own library. Users can download it, include its headers and link against it.
Most of the examples online of C-to-Lua implementations show the C program messing around with Lua States and Compilers and even compiling both files in a special way to work properly.
But is there a way to call a C function from Lua without the C program knowing it will be used in a Lua program?
I mean something like loading a Lua library: to do that, I just call
module = require("/path/library")
module.doSomething()
from a standard Lua interpreter, while the examples of C-to-Lua I found online say not only you have to modify your C program to fit whit Lua, but you also need to compile them in a special way and things like that.
So, again, is it possible to call a C function from a standard Lua interpreter whitout the C module knowing it will be used in Lua?
I don't know if it can be of any help, but I'm using LuaJIT.
Use the FFI library that is integrated into LuaJIT.
I was under the impression that it should be possible to mix c and c++ code, but looks like I was wrong.
I'm having a bunch of existing C code and have written a class in C++ that I would like to use in the existing C code.
Is that even possible?
C++ is not a superset of C and thus not all C code is valid C++ code. This is even more true for C++ code in a C compiler. All language additions C++ has are not valid C (classes, generic programming, namespaces). What you could do is compile the result code with a C++ compiler and fix cases where code that was valid for a C compiler isn't for a C++ compiler.
You can't use classes from C code, because classes don't exist in C.
However, you can define a bunch of global functions that access your class, and then you can access those functions from C.
You can mix the two and then compile the result as C++.
If you have a C++ class that you want to use in C then you could remove all the member functions and rewrite then with an extra parameter being a ptr to a structure.
More advance C++ features wouldn't be so easy to incorporate in C.
I have a few ideas:
char* test = "testInteger(5).workOnReturn("doIt")[10]"
int ret = execute(test);
What if I use the 'extern' keyword?
Suppose I have a whole bunch of C++ implementations and classes.
Couldn't I just define the same things in C with 'extern' and provide a dummy implementation and on runtime, it would access the C++ library with the actual implementation?
Perhaps you could customize your GCC compiler (e.g. with a MELT extension) to produce somehow a C interface to your library (perhaps by annotating relevant C++ functions with your own #pragma-s ....)
But your question is too vague to get a more precise answer.
What is your C++ library, how should it be used in C++?
Look at how other C++ libraries interface to C; e.g. look inside the source code of PPL
If you want to use C++ from C, it can be done only in an extremely limited way, and as far as the C++ code is explicitly built for it (that means basically throwing away most for what makes C++ C++). Won't happen in your case.
Your ways out are to just use C++ or get a library for C. Anything else will hurt too much to make any sense.
Overview:
I'm working with a hobby app. I want my program to be able to stick to "plain C".
For several reasons, I have to use a C++ compiler, and the related programming enviroment program, that supports "Plain C". And, for the same reasons, I cannot change to antoher compiler.
And, there are some C++ features that I have been coded, unintentionally.
For example, I'm not using namespaces or classes. My current programming job, is not "plain c" or "c++", and I haven't used them for some time, so, I may have forgotten which stuff is "plain c" only.
I have browsed in the internet, for "Plain C" examples. I have found that many other developers, have also post mixed "plain c" & "c++" examples, (some of them unintentionally).
I'm using some dynamically allocated structures. I have been using "malloc", but I rather use "new" instead. I thought that some new standard & compiler versions of "plain c" allowed "new", but, seems I'm wrong.
Seems that "new" is a "C++" feature, & if I really want to make a only "plain c", I should use "malloc".
The reason I want to stick to "plain C", it's because I'm working in a cross platform non-gui library / tool.
My current platform is "Windowze", my Development Enviroments, are:
(1) CodeBlocks (MinGW)
(2) Bloodshed DevCPP
(3) Borland CBuilder 6
Although, my goal is to migrate it to Linux, too , and maybe other platforms, and other (command-line) compilers.
Quick not Tested Example:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <strings.h>
struct MyData_T
{
int MyInt;
char MyName[512];
char *MyCharPtr;
};
typedef
struct MyData_T *MyData_P;
MyData_P newData(char* AName)
{
MyData_P Result = null;
Result = malloc(sizeof(MyData_T));
strcpy(Result->MyName, AName, strlen(AName));
// do other stuff with fields
return Result;
} // MyData_P newData(...)
int main(...)
{
int ErrorCode = 0;
MyData_P MyDataVar = newData("John Doe");
// do more stuff with "MyDataVar";
free(MyDataVar);
return ErrorCode;
} // int main(...)
Questions
Where I can get a working "plain c only" compiler for x86 (windowze, linux) ?
Should I stick to use "malloc", "calloc", and similar ?
Should I consider to change to "C++" & "new", instead ?
Is it valid to use "new" & "delete" in a "plain c" application ?
Any other suggestion ?
Thanks.
Disclaimer
Note: I already spent several hours trying not to post the same question, in Stackoverflow, but, none of the previous answers seem clear to me.
Remember that C and C++ are actually completely different languages. They share some common syntax, but C is a procedural language and C++ is object oriented, so they are different programming paradigms.
gcc should work just fine as a C compiler. I believe MinGW uses it. It also has flags you can specify to make sure it's using the right version of C (e.g. C99).
If you want to stick with C then you simply won't be able to use new (it's not part of the C language) but there shouldn't be any problems with moving to C++ for a shared library, just so long as you put your Object Oriented hat on when you do.
I'd suggest you just stick with the language you are more comfortable with. The fact that you're using new suggests that will be C++, but it's up to you.
You can use e.g. GCC as a C compiler. To ensure it's compiling as C, use the -x c option. You can also specify a particular version of the C standard, e.g. -std=c99. To ensure you're not using any GCC-specific extensions, you can use the -pedantic flag. I'm sure other compilers have similar options.
malloc and calloc are indeed how you allocate memory in C.
That's up to you.* You say that you want to be cross-platform, but C++ is essentially just as "cross-platform" as C. However, if you're working on embedded platforms (e.g. microcontrollers or DSPs), you may not find C++ compilers for them.
No, new and delete are not supported in C.
* In my opinion, though, you should strongly consider switching to C++ for any application of non-trivial complexity. C++ has far more powerful high-level constructs than C (e.g. smart pointers, containers, templates) that simplify a lot of the tedious work in C. It takes a while to learn how to use them effectively, but in the long run, they will be worth it.
GCC has a C compiler. It's the basic one. You can call it with gcc -std=c90 to make sure it doesn't slip in any Gnu or C++ extensions.
Yes, malloc/calloc are portable and safe for use in C
Only if you have some reason to switch to C++… C is a bit more portable, but not by much, these days.
The most important tip is to save your file with a .c extension and disable compiler extensions. On both Visual C++ and gcc (and thus MinGW) this makes them go into C mode, where C++ additions will be disabled.
You can also force C mode using -std=c90 (or c99, depending on the C standard you want to use; these also disable GNU extensions) in gcc, /Tc in VC++ (and here to disable MS extensions you have to use /Za).
If using visual studio, just make the file .c (though its not strictly a C compiler, it pretends to be, and for the most, is good enough)
*nix world you can use gcc, as its pretty much the standard.
If you want to do C stick to C, if you want to do C++, use C++
so stick with malloc etc.... in C++ you'd use smart pointers.
You don't have to stick with C to create cross platform non-GUI library. You can as well develop that in C++. Since it is hobby, it is OK, but there are such libraries already available.
It seems that starting with C17 (or the technical name ISO/IEC 9899:2018) the new keyword is being supported. To make this work, if you're using Visual Studio Code, in the c_cpp_properties.json file update:
"cStandard": "c17", and
"cppStandard": "c++17"