bra1nDump / funC

make programming in C fun by using this Haskell and F# inspired library

funC library

Build with emacs

This library attempts to make programming in a functional style simpler in C. In other words it tries to make programming in C fun. It was inspired by functional-first languages:

• Haskell
• F#
• Elixir
• LISP

Who is this for?

Students, in whom the spark of functional programming was lit at, would want to use this library for having more fun taking courses that require to write C code.

Wait, why?

After coding a couple of CS assignments as well as using them at a day job functional style of programming appealed to me a lot, and now having to go back to the old C really bothered me. Things that bother me the most are:

• Weird standard library, as well as relatively bad namespacing (like std in c++)
• Low level memory managment
• Poor generic programming tooling
• No first class support for functions

What does the library do?

• Implements modules like List, Array, Map, System that have nice namespacing for working with associated types
• Attempts to simplify memory managment using Box and container free (more on this later in the document)
• Uses Box abstraction to store any data structures. Is based on void * pointers and memcpy
• Implements map, fold, show in every container module

Examples

box square(void* xVoidPointer) {
	int xInt = *((int*) xVoidPointer);
	int newContents = xInt * xInt;
	return Box.box(sizeof(int), &newContents);
}

void printInt(void* xVoidPointer) {
	printf("%d\n", *((int*) xVoidPointer));
}

int main() {
	List.map_
		( printInt
		, List.map
			( square
			, List.integerRange(1, 10)));
}

Did I just create an integer list from a range, mapped over it and printed it out all in one statement?

Yes you did! We promissed you functional C!

What does the library not do?

• Make you a decent functional programmer overnight
• Solve any of the above listed limitations of C entirely

Contribute

All contributions are welcome!

If anyone has any info on simmilar libraries or why this idea is doomed for failure, please reach out.

General thoughts

I do not know how useful this library can actually be , but I want to find out by applying it to the homeworks of cs 111 at UCLA winter 19 semester taught by proffessor Eggert.

References

discussions

• discriminated unions for functional programming

• stackoverflow post tools for functional programming in C

alternatives

• Lightweight C library for functional programming

or even better - write in a completely different language, but compile to C. Feels like not the most fair-game for the class lol

• compilers targeting C