Question

I have a C program in which I need to create a whole family of functions which have the same signatures and bodies, and differ only in their types. What I would like to do is define a macro which generates all of those functions for me, as otherwise I will spend a long time copying and modifying the original functions. As an example, one of the functions I need to generate looks like this:

int copy_key__sint_(void *key, void **args, int argc, void **out {
if ((*out = malloc(sizeof(int))) {
return 1;
}

**((_int_ **) out) = *((_int_ *) key);  
return 0;  

}

The idea is that I could call a macro, GENERATE_FUNCTIONS(“int”, “sint”) or something like this, and have it generate this function. The italicized parts are what need to be plugged in.

Is this possible?

Answer 1

I don’t understand the example function that you are giving very well, but using macros for the task is relatively easy. Just you wouldn’t give strings to the macro as arguments but tokens:

#define DECLARE_MY_COPY_FUNCTION(TYPE, SUFFIX)              \
int copy_function_ ## SUFFIX(unsigned count, TYPE* arg)

#define DEFINE_MY_COPY_FUNCTION(TYPE, SUFFIX)               \
int copy_function_ ## SUFFIX(unsigned count, TYPE* arg) {   \
 /* do something with TYPE */                               \
 return whatever;                                           \
}

You may then use this to declare the functions in a header file

DECLARE_MY_COPY_FUNCTION(unsigned, toto);
DECLARE_MY_COPY_FUNCTION(double, hui);

and define them in a .c file:

DEFINE_MY_COPY_FUNCTION(unsigned, toto);
DEFINE_MY_COPY_FUNCTION(double, hui);

In this version as stated here you might get warnings on superfluous `;’. But you can get rid of them by adding dummy declarations in the macros like this

#define DEFINE_MY_COPY_FUNCTION(TYPE, SUFFIX)               \
int copy_function_ ## SUFFIX(unsigned count, TYPE* arg) {   \
 /* do something with TYPE */                               \
 return whatever;                                           \
}                                                           \
enum { dummy_enum_for_copy_function_ ## SUFFIX }