Function pointer cast to different signature

Question

I use a structure of function pointers to implement an interface for different backends. The signatures are very different, but the return values are almost all void, void * or int.

struct my_interface {
    void  (*func_a)(int i);
    void *(*func_b)(const char *bla);
    ...
    int   (*func_z)(char foo);
};

But it is not required that a backends supports functions for every interface function. So I have two possibilities, first option is to check before every call if the pointer is unequal NULL. I don't like that very much, because of the readability and because I fear the performance impacts (I haven't measured it, however). The other option is to have a dummy function, for the rare cases an interface function doesn't exist.

Therefore I'd need a dummy function for every signature, I wonder if it is possible to have only one for the different return values. And cast it to the given signature.

#include <stdio.h>

int nothing(void) {return 0;}

typedef int (*cb_t)(int);

int main(void)
{
    cb_t func;
    int i;

    func = (cb_t) nothing;
    i = func(1);

    printf("%d\n", i);

    return 0;
}

I tested this code with gcc and it works. But is it sane? Or can it corrupt the stack or can it cause other problems?

EDIT: Thanks to all the answers, I learned now much about calling conventions, after a bit of further reading. And have now a much better understanding of what happens under the hood.

Answer 1

By the C specification, casting a function pointer results in undefined behavior. In fact, for a while, GCC 4.3 prereleases would return NULL whenever you casted a function pointer, perfectly valid by the spec, but they backed out that change before release because it broke lots of programs.

Assuming GCC continues doing what it does now, it will work fine with the default x86 calling convention (and most calling conventions on most architectures), but I wouldn't depend on it. Testing the function pointer against NULL at every callsite isn't much more expensive than a function call. If you really want, you may write a macro:

#define CALL_MAYBE(func, args...) do {if (func) (func)(## args);} while (0)

Or you could have a different dummy function for every signature, but I can understand that you'd like to avoid that.

Edit

Charles Bailey called me out on this, so I went and looked up the details (instead of relying on my holey memory). The C specification says

766 A pointer to a function of one type may be converted to a pointer to a function of another type and back again;
767 the result shall compare equal to the original pointer.
768 If a converted pointer is used to call a function whose type is not compatible with the pointed-to type, the behavior is undefined.

and GCC 4.2 prereleases (this was settled way before 4.3) was following these rules: the cast of a function pointer did not result in NULL, as I wrote, but attempting to call a function through a incompatible type, i.e.

func = (cb_t)nothing;
func(1);

from your example, would result in an abort. They changed back to the 4.1 behavior (allow but warn), partly because this change broke OpenSSL, but OpenSSL has been fixed in the meantime, and this is undefined behavior which the compiler is free to change at any time.

OpenSSL was only casting functions pointers to other function types taking and returning the same number of values of the same exact sizes, and this (assuming you're not dealing with floating-point) happens to be safe across all the platforms and calling conventions I know of. However, anything else is potentially unsafe.