Is there any standardized and commonly-used library for C (C99 or whatever), as STL is for C++?

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Container Class / Library for C

I expect I'd be forced to use vectors, lists and sets for my C program. Should I invent those entities from scratch, or there is some kind of standard library for C as STL is for C++ ?

duplicated question see for example: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/305611/container-class-library-for-c — quinmars, Jan 06 '11 at 18:02
take a look at GLib: http://library.gnome.org/devel/glib/stable/glib-data-types.html — Christoph, Jan 06 '11 at 18:27
If you want to use abstract vectors, lists, and sets then you should probably be writing C++, not C. Copying the idioms of a higher-level language onto C will defeat any advantage C has and will result in much uglier code than if you just wrote it in the higher-level language to begin with. See any `glib`/`gtk` code for a great example of this. — R.. GitHub STOP HELPING ICE, Jan 06 '11 at 18:32
@Christoph: Haha your comment showed up just as soon as I added mine citing glib as why this is a bad idea. :-) — R.. GitHub STOP HELPING ICE, Jan 06 '11 at 18:32
@R..: I've never used it extensively, but as far as I can tell, GLib is decent enough - it's GObject which tries to push square blocks through round holes; there's a reason why the GNOME guys created Vala as a frontend — Christoph, Jan 06 '11 at 18:56

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 06 '11 at 18:10

C doesn't have templates, so it might be difficult to implement those C++ collections in a generic way. I'm not aware of any libraries that implement those features in C.

If I were faced with such a situation, my first thought would be to isolate the parts of my program that would benefit from C++ features, write them in C++, then provide an extern "C" interface to those modules so they could be called from the pure C parts of the program. Is that an option for you?

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 06 '11 at 17:57

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There is a standard c library, but it does not have any support for built-in container types such as the ones you list.

answered Jan 06 '11 at 17:57

zdan

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Yes, but C99 has some built-in features in their new array type, no? – Mordachai Jan 06 '11 at 18:21

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 06 '11 at 18:31

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You can look at APR, or GLib. Those are widely used portable C libraries with everything you need not to reinvent the wheel each time.

answered Jan 06 '11 at 18:31

Alexandre C.

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Is there any standardized and commonly-used library for C (C99 or whatever), as STL is for C++?

3 Answers3