How would one write object-oriented code in C? [closed]

Question

Yes. In fact Axel Schreiner provides his book "Object-oriented Programming in ANSI-C" for free which covers the subject quite thoroughly.

Since you're talking about polymorphism then yes, you can, we were doing that sort of stuff years before C++ came about.

Basically you use a struct to hold both the data and a list of function pointers to point to the relevant functions for that data.

So, in a communications class, you would have an open, read, write and close call which would be maintained as four function pointers in the structure, alongside the data for an object, something like:

typedef struct {
    int (*open)(void *self, char *fspec);
    int (*close)(void *self);
    int (*read)(void *self, void *buff, size_t max_sz, size_t *p_act_sz);
    int (*write)(void *self, void *buff, size_t max_sz, size_t *p_act_sz);
    // And data goes here.
} tCommClass;

tCommClass commRs232;
commRs232.open = &rs232Open;
: :
commRs232.write = &rs232Write;

tCommClass commTcp;
commTcp.open = &tcpOpen;
: :
commTcp.write = &tcpWrite;

Of course, those code segments above would actually be in a "constructor" such as rs232Init().

When you 'inherit' from that class, you just change the pointers to point to your own functions. Everyone that called those functions would do it through the function pointers, giving you your polymorphism:

int stat = (commTcp.open)(commTcp, "bigiron.box.com:5000");

Sort of like a manual vtable.

You could even have virtual classes by setting the pointers to NULL -the behaviour would be slightly different to C++ (a core dump at run-time rather than an error at compile time).

Here's a piece of sample code that demonstrates it. First the top-level class structure:

#include <stdio.h>

// The top-level class.

typedef struct sCommClass {
    int (*open)(struct sCommClass *self, char *fspec);
} tCommClass;

Then we have the functions for the TCP 'subclass':

// Function for the TCP 'class'.

static int tcpOpen (tCommClass *tcp, char *fspec) {
    printf ("Opening TCP: %s\n", fspec);
    return 0;
}
static int tcpInit (tCommClass *tcp) {
    tcp->open = &tcpOpen;
    return 0;
}

And the HTTP one as well:

// Function for the HTTP 'class'.

static int httpOpen (tCommClass *http, char *fspec) {
    printf ("Opening HTTP: %s\n", fspec);
    return 0;
}
static int httpInit (tCommClass *http) {
    http->open = &httpOpen;
    return 0;
}

And finally a test program to show it in action:

// Test program.

int main (void) {
    int status;
    tCommClass commTcp, commHttp;

    // Same 'base' class but initialised to different sub-classes.

    tcpInit (&commTcp);
    httpInit (&commHttp);

    // Called in exactly the same manner.

    status = (commTcp.open)(&commTcp, "bigiron.box.com:5000");
    status = (commHttp.open)(&commHttp, "http://www.microsoft.com");

    return 0;
}

This produces the output:

Opening TCP: bigiron.box.com:5000
Opening HTTP: http://www.microsoft.com

so you can see that the different functions are being called, depending on the sub-class.

Namespaces are often done by doing:

stack_push(thing *)

instead of

stack::push(thing *)

To make a C struct into something like a C++ class you can turn:

class stack {
     public:
        stack();
        void push(thing *);
        thing * pop();
        static int this_is_here_as_an_example_only;
     private:
        ...
};

Into

struct stack {
     struct stack_type * my_type;
     // Put the stuff that you put after private: here
};
struct stack_type {
     void (* construct)(struct stack * this); // This takes uninitialized memory
     struct stack * (* operator_new)(); // This allocates a new struct, passes it to construct, and then returns it
     void (*push)(struct stack * this, thing * t); // Pushing t onto this stack
     thing * (*pop)(struct stack * this); // Pops the top thing off the stack and returns it
     int this_is_here_as_an_example_only;
}Stack = {
    .construct = stack_construct,
    .operator_new = stack_operator_new,
    .push = stack_push,
    .pop = stack_pop
};
// All of these functions are assumed to be defined somewhere else

And do:

struct stack * st = Stack.operator_new(); // Make a new stack
if (!st) {
   // Do something about it
} else {
   // You can use the stack
   stack_push(st, thing0); // This is a non-virtual call
   Stack.push(st, thing1); // This is like casting *st to a Stack (which it already is) and doing the push
   st->my_type.push(st, thing2); // This is a virtual call
}

I didn't do the destructor or delete, but it follows the same pattern.

this_is_here_as_an_example_only is like a static class variable -- shared among all instances of a type. All methods are really static, except that some take a this *

I believe that besides being useful in its own right, implementing OOP in C is an excellent way to learn OOP and understand its inner workings. Experience of many programmers has shown that to use a technique efficiently and confidently, a programmer must understand how the underlying concepts are ultimately implemented. Emulating classes, inheritance, and polymorphism in C teaches just this.

To answer the original question, here are a couple resources that teach how to do OOP in C:

EmbeddedGurus.com blog post "Object-based programming in C" shows how to implement classes and single inheritance in portable C: http://embeddedgurus.com/state-space/2008/01/object-based-programming-in-c/

Application Note ""C+"—Object Oriented Programming in C" shows how to implement classes, single inheritance, and late binding (polymorphism) in C using preprocessor macros: http://www.state-machine.com/resources/cplus_3.0_manual.pdf, the example code is available from http://www.state-machine.com/resources/cplus_3.0.zip

I've seen it done. I wouldn't recommend it. C++ originally started this way as a preprocessor that produced C code as an intermediate step.

Essentially what you end up doing is create a dispatch table for all of your methods where you store your function references. Deriving a class would entail copying this dispatch table and replacing the entries that you wanted to override, with your new "methods" having to call the original method if it wants to invoke the base method. Eventually, you end up rewriting C++.