C magic header

When playing around with datashit, an experimental C library to support containers and functional programming style, I needed to make the library usable, and to achieve that I needed to support optional and default parameters.

After this you might take me for crazy: optional and default parameters in C, what’s this heresy?

Well, I came up with a simple header that makes that easily doable, thus improving usability of libraries.

#define ARGS_LENGTH(...)  ARGS_LENGTH_(0, ##__VA_ARGS__, ARGS_LENGTH_SEQ)
#define ARGS_LENGTH_(...) ARGS_LENGTH_N(__VA_ARGS__)

#define ARGS_LENGTH_N(_, \
	 _1,  _2,  _3,  _4,  _5,  _6,  _7,  _8,  _9, _10, \
	_11, _12, _13, _14, _15, _16, _17, _18, _19, _20, \
	_21, _22, _23, _24, _25, _26, _27, _28, _29, _30, \
	_31, _32, _33, _34, _35, _36, _37, _38, _39, _40, \
	_41, _42, _43, _44, _45, _46, _47, _48, _49, _50, \
	_51, _52, _53, _54, _55, _56, _57, _58, _59, _60, \
	_61, _62, _63, N, ...) N

#define ARGS_LENGTH_SEQ \
	                        63, 62, 61, 60, \
	59, 58, 57, 56, 55, 54, 53, 52, 51, 50, \
	49, 48, 47, 46, 45, 44, 43, 42, 41, 40, \
	39, 38, 37, 36, 35, 34, 33, 32, 31, 30, \
	29, 28, 27, 26, 25, 24, 23, 22, 21, 20, \
	19, 18, 17, 16, 15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, \
	 9,  8,  7,  6,  5,  4,  3,  2,  1,  0

#define ARGS_FIRST_AS(type, ...)  ((type) ARGS_FIRST(__VA_ARGS__))
#define ARGS_FIRST(...) ARGS_FIRST_(0, ##__VA_ARGS__, ARGS_ZERO_SEQ)
#define ARGS_FIRST_(...) ARGS_FIRST__(__VA_ARGS__)
#define ARGS_FIRST__(_, a, ...) (a)

#define ARGS_SECOND_AS(type, ...) ((type) ARGS_SECOND(__VA_ARGS__))
#define ARGS_SECOND(...) ARGS_SECOND_(0, ##__VA_ARGS__, ARGS_ZERO_SEQ)
#define ARGS_SECOND_(...) ARGS_SECOND__(__VA_ARGS__)
#define ARGS_SECOND__(_, a, b, ...) (b)

#define ARGS_THIRD_AS(type, ...)  ((type) ARGS_THIRD(__VA_ARGS__))
#define ARGS_THIRD(...) ARGS_THIRD_(0, ##__VA_ARGS__, ARGS_ZERO_SEQ)
#define ARGS_THIRD_(...) ARGS_THIRD__(__VA_ARGS__)
#define ARGS_THIRD__(_, a, b, c, ...) (c)

#define ARGS_FOURTH_AS(type, ...) ((type) ARGS_FOURTH(__VA_ARGS__))
#define ARGS_FOURTH(...) ARGS_FOURTH_(0, ##__VA_ARGS__, ARGS_ZERO_SEQ)
#define ARGS_FOURTH_(...) ARGS_FOURTH__(__VA_ARGS__)
#define ARGS_FOURTH__(_, a, b, c, d, ...) (d)

#define ARGS_FIFTH_AS(type, ...)  ((type) ARGS_FIFTH(__VA_ARGS__))
#define ARGS_FIFTH(...) ARGS_FIFTH_(0, ##__VA_ARGS__, ARGS_ZERO_SEQ)
#define ARGS_FIFTH_(...) ARGS_FIFTH__(__VA_ARGS__)
#define ARGS_FIFTH__(_, a, b, c, d, e, ...) (e)

#define ARGS_ZERO_SEQ \
	0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, \
	0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, \
	0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0

Here’s a simple example of how it makes life easier with variadic functions:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdarg.h>
#include "magic.h"

int
lol (int n, ...)
{
  va_list args;
  int     result = 0;

  va_start(args, n);

  for (size_t i = 0; i < n; i++) {
    result += va_arg(args, int);
  }

  va_end(args);

  return result;
}

#define lol(...) lol(ARGS_LENGTH(__VA_ARGS__), __VA_ARGS__)

int
main (int argc, char* argv[])
{
  printf("%d\n", lol(2, 4, 8));

  return 0;
}

> gcc -std=gnu99 -o lol lol.c
> ./lol
14

As you can see, doing it like that you don’t have to pass the number of arguments as first parameter or pass a guard to know where the last parameter is, just some preprocessor magic and we have that automatically.

Here’s an example for optional parameters:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdarg.h>
#include "magic.h"

int
lol (int a, int b, int c)
{
  return a + b + c;
}

#define lol(...) (\
  (ARGS_LENGTH(__VA_ARGS__) == 1 ?\
    lol(1, 2, ARGS_FIRST_AS(int, __VA_ARGS__)) :\
\
  (ARGS_LENGTH(__VA_ARGS__) == 2 ?\
    lol(1, ARGS_FIRST_AS(int, __VA_ARGS__), ARGS_SECOND_AS(int, __VA_ARGS__)) :\
\
  lol(ARGS_FIRST_AS(int, __VA_ARGS__), ARGS_SECOND_AS(int, __VA_ARGS__),\
    ARGS_THIRD_AS(int, __VA_ARGS__))))\
)

int
main (int argc, char* argv[])
{
  printf("%d\n", lol(3));
  printf("%d\n", lol(2, 3));
  printf("%d\n", lol(1, 2, 3));

  return 0;
}

> gcc -std=gnu99 -Wno-pointer-to-int-cast -o lol lol.c
> ./lol
6
6
6

For optional parameters follow the example with default parameters but pass as parameter soemthing you know means nothing has been passed.

Understanding the magic

When ARGS_LENGTH is called ARGS_LENGTH_ gets called with parameteres + ARGS_LENGTH_SEQ, for 1, 2, 3 you would get 1, 2, 3, 63, 62....

At that point ARGS_LENGTH_N is called with the two sequences concatenated and the number of arguments is found in N, because the more parameters the more the sequence shifts to the right.

ARGS_FIRST etcetera use a similar concept, except to ensure a result is yield a sequence of 0 is used

As first argument of both 0, ##__VA_ARGS__ is used to ensure that there won’t be an empty value as first argument, thus yielding 1 even when no arguments are passed and passing nothing when using ARGS_FIRST and the like.

C magic header [Thursday, 2012-09-13]

Understanding the magic