Question

Given the desire to abstract the structure of a circular buffer from its content, and starting from the following code segments (courtesy of this wikipedia entry):

typedef struct
{ 
    int value;
} ElemType;

typedef struct
{
    int         size;      /* total number of elements */
    int         start;     /* index of oldest element */
    int         count;     /* index at which to write new element  */
    ElemType   *elements;  /* vector of elements */
} CircularBuffer;

void cbInit(CircularBuffer *cb, int size) {
    cb->size  = size;
    cb->start = 0;
    cb->count = 0;
    cb->elements = (ElemType *)calloc(cb->size, sizeof(ElemType));
}

How does one abstract the element type so that it is specified when an instance of the CircularBuffer is defined? My attempt thus far is as follows:

CircularBuffer *cbInit(uint16 size, void *element)
{
    CircularBuffer *buffer;

    buffer = malloc(sizeof(*buffer));

    if (buffer != NULL)
    {
        buffer->size = size;
        buffer->start = 0;
        buffer->count = 0;
        buffer->elements = (void *)calloc(size, sizeof(???));

        if (buffer->elements == NULL)
        {
            free(buffer);
            buffer = NULL;
        }
    }

    return buffer;
}

But I cannot figure out how to determine the size of an unknown type, which may be an int, a struct, or anything in between. Is what I am attempting to do even possible?

Answer 1

As you’ve found out, you can’t automatically tell the size of an unknown piece of data. You’ll need either a fixed element type (void* would be a good generic choice), or have the user pass in the size of each element:

CircularBuffer *cbInit(uint16 size, int elementSize)
{
    ...
    buffer->elementSize = elementSize;
    buffer->elements    = calloc(size, elementSize);  
}