ktweeden / str_t_exercise

[WIP] An Exercism.io-like exercise to create a C library that provides a wrapper type for strings

C-string Wrapper Exercise

An Exercism.io-like exercise to create a C library that provides a wrapper type for strings

The task

To build a simple wrapper around native C strings.

The header in include/str_t.h declares signatures for the functions you need to implement.

Add test to tests/test_str_t.c to specify how the functions should behave.

Remember to ask yourself: what parts of the code should "own" and thus free any memory you allocate?

BEWARE there are gotchas hidden in this starter code. It is your task to find them.

You MAY change the signatures in the header if you need to.

Learning outcomes

Understand:

• how low-level C's string handling is
• how higher-level languages (possibly implemented in C) might wrap low level C strings to add some safety
• the tricky problem of memory ownership and when/where to free allocated memory
• how easy it is to forget to free memory you have allocated
• the difference between passing a struct as a pointer versus by value.

Usage

Build and run the tests:

$ make test

Clean build outputs:

$ make clean

Clean build outputs and remove downloaded dependencies:

$ make clobber

To run the memory error detector. Install valgrind:

# First time only (Mac)
$ brew install valgrind

# First time only (Ubuntu/Debian)
$ sudo apt-get install valgrind

From then on ...

$ make memcheck