I’m interested in getting into C to get close to the metal performance, but would like to write in a Pythonic style and don’t want to roll my own dynamic strings, lists, and dictionaries. Cython is pretty good, but would like to know how to use dynamic variables in straight C if possible.
With C++ there is of course the STL, which will give you String, Vector, and Map. Certainly one possibility is to program in a C-like style in C++, using only those features. Is that the standard practice if you need dynamic variables in C?
Use C++; it has standard and highly-optimized versions of all of these. There’s absolutely no reason or benefit to limit yourself to C.
(ed: In other words, yes, that’s a very standard practice. Remember, there’s no requirement to use any of C++’s features when using C++; by design, you can pick and choose. I often disable exceptions, for example, since it leads to massively bloated executables. There’s simply no reason to write code in C.)