dtl_type

A dynamic type system for the C programming language.

What is it?

A Dynamically Typed Language (or DTL) is a generic term for a modern scripting language such as Python, Perl or Javascript. Such languages usually contains many parts:

Language syntax
Compiler
Runtime Interpreter (or Virtual Machine)
- Type system
Language Libraries

In dtl_type I have implemnted just the type system without any of the other language components. It is inspired by the Perl type system and uses similar terminology.

Using this library you can easily build arbitrarily complex data structures in runtime using the C programming language. All values are reference counted which significantly simplifies memory management. The initial reference count of newly created values is 1.

Some programming languages (or libraries) might provide a special kind of data type called Variant, this library offers a similar solution for the C programming language.

Where is it used?

This repo is a submodule of the cogu/c-apx (top-level) project.

Dependencies

The unit test project(s) assume that the repos are cloned side-by-side to a common directory as seen below.

adt
cutil
dtl_type (this repo)

Git Example

cd ~
mkdir repo && cd repo
git clone https://github.com/cogu/adt.git
git clone https://github.com/cogu/cutil.git
git clone https://github.com/cogu/dtl_type.git
cd dtl_type

Related projects

The cogu/dtl_json project provides JSON serialization and deserialization routines based on the dtl_type system.

Building with CMake

First clone this repo and its dependencies into a common directory (such as ~/repo) as seen above. Alternatively the repos can be submodules of a top-level repo (as seen in cogu/c-apx).

For Windows, use a "Native tools command prompt" from your Visual Studio installation. It comes with a cmake binary that by default chooses the appropriate compiler version.

Running unit tests (Linux and Windows)

Configure:

cmake -S . -B build -DUNIT_TEST=ON

Build:

cmake --build build --target dtl_type_unit

Run test cases:

cd build && ctest

Usage

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include "dtl_type.h"
#include "adt_str.h"

int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
   int i;
   dtl_sv_t *sv;

   /*** Scalar values ***/
   dtl_sv_t *sv1 = dtl_sv_make_i32(125);
   dtl_sv_t *sv2 = dtl_sv_make_cstr("Hello World");
   dtl_sv_t *sv3 = dtl_sv_make_dbl(10.2);

   printf("%d\n", dtl_sv_to_i32(sv1, NULL));
   printf("%s\n", dtl_sv_to_cstr(sv2));
   printf("%f\n", dtl_sv_to_dbl(sv3, NULL));
   printf("\n");

   /*** Array Values ***/
   dtl_av_t *av = dtl_av_new();
   dtl_av_push(av, (dtl_dv_t*) sv1, true);
   dtl_av_push(av, (dtl_dv_t*) sv2, true);
   dtl_av_push(av, (dtl_dv_t*) sv3, true);
   //reference count for sv1, sv2 and sv3 are now set to 2

   /*** Printing Array Values***/
   for (i = 0; i < dtl_av_length(av); i++)
   {
      sv = (dtl_sv_t*) dtl_av_value(av, i);
      const char *cstr = dtl_sv_to_cstr(sv);
      printf("%s\n", cstr );
   }
   dtl_dec_ref(av); //deletes av. Reference count for sv1, sv2 and sv3 is now 1
   printf("\n");

   /*** Hash Values ***/
   dtl_hv_t *hv = dtl_hv_new();
   dtl_hv_set_cstr(hv, "first", (dtl_dv_t*) sv1, true);
   dtl_hv_set_cstr(hv, "second",(dtl_dv_t*) sv2, true);
   dtl_hv_set_cstr(hv, "third", (dtl_dv_t*) sv3, true);
   //reference count for sv1,sv2 and sv3 is now 2

   const char *key;
   dtl_hv_iter_init(hv);
   while ( (sv = (dtl_sv_t*) dtl_hv_iter_next_cstr(hv, &key)) )
   {
      sv = (dtl_sv_t*) dtl_hv_get_cstr(hv, key);
      printf("%s: %s\n", key, dtl_sv_to_cstr(sv));
   }
   dtl_dec_ref(hv); //deletes hv
   //reference count for sv1, sv2 and sv3 is now 1

   /*** cleanup ***/
   dtl_dec_ref(sv1); //deletes sv1 (reference count -> 0)
   dtl_dec_ref(sv2); //deletes sv2 (reference count -> 0)
   dtl_dec_ref(sv3); //deletes sv3 (reference count -> 0)

   return 0;
}

Dynamic Value (DV)

This is the base class which all other value types inherits from. (This is a pseudo-statement since C have neither classes or inheritance-)

A dynamic value can be any of the following types:

Scalar Value (SV)
Array Value (AV)
Hash Value (HV)

Scalar Values (SV)

A scalar contains a single unit of data.

Example of scalar types:

Integer
Double
String
Boolean
NoneType (this name is actually borrowed from Python)

Array Values (AV)

Array values are managed arrays containing dynamic values (DVs).

Examples:

Array of scalar values
Array of array values
Array of hash values
Array of mixed values (any of the above)

Hash Values (HV)

Hash values are key-value lookup tables where the key is a string and the value is any dynamic value (DV).

cogu / dtl_type