[OCLUG-devel] Single Element Structures

[Christopher Smith]

Dan Stromberg wrote:
> C can do ADT's pretty well really, except for the information hiding part.

How so? I mean:

struct foo {
    int (*method1)();
    void (*method2)(int);
    void* data;
};

may not be the prettiest thing, but it works quite well to hide the
underlying data structures.

> Two common data representations that might be used internally by a stack
> ADT (abstract data type) would be an array, or a linked list.

Yeah, but then you'd want to define it slightly differently from the
example described:

struct ll_stack;
struct array_stack;
#ifdef USE_LINKED_LIST
typedef ll_stack stack;
#else
typedef array_stack stack;
#endif

That way you can have both the array and linked list functions compiling
successfully simultaneously (because they will use array_stack or
ll_stack as their parameter types, not stack), and the stack-using code
will just automagically link to the right one.

> That way, any time I want to use a global variable
> named "foo", I instead refer to "global.foo", making it a hair less
> confusing when another programmer works on my code, or I revisit my own
> code years later.  :)

Wouldn't it be simpler and just as good a hint to name the variable
"global_foo"?

--Chris