Question

I’ve been looking into using C over C++ as I find it cleaner and the main thing I find it to lack is a vector like array.

What is the best implementation of this?

I want to just be able to call something like vector_create, vector_at, vector_add, etc.

Answer 1

EDIT

This answer is from a million years ago, but at some point, I actually implemented a macro-based, efficient, type-safe vector work-alike in C that covers all the typical features and needs. You can find it here:

https://github.com/eteran/c-vector

Original answer below.

---

What about a vector are you looking to replicate? I mean in the end, it all boils down to something like this:

int *create_vector(size_t n) {
    return malloc(n * sizeof(int));
}

void delete_vector(int *v) {
    free(v);
}

int *resize_vector(int *v, size_t n) {
    return realloc(v, n * sizeof(int));
    /* returns NULL on failure here */
}

You could wrap this all up in a struct, so it "knows its size" too, but you’d have to do it for every type (macros here?), but that seems a little uneccessary… Perhaps something like this:

typedef struct {
    size_t size;
    int *data;
} int_vector;

int_vector *create_vector(size_t n) {
    int_vector *p = malloc(sizeof(int_vector));
    if(p) {
        p->data = malloc(n * sizeof(int));
        p->size = n;
    }
    return p;
}

void delete_vector(int_vector *v) {
    if(v) {
        free(v->data);
        free(v);
    }
}

size_t resize_vector(int_vector *v, size_t n) {
    if(v) {
        int *p = realloc(v->data, n * sizeof(int));
        if(p) {
            v->data = p;
            v->size = n;
        }
        return v->size;
    }
    return 0;
}

int get_vector(int_vector *v, size_t n) {
    if(v && n < v->size) {
        return v->data[n];
    }
    /* return some error value, i'm doing -1 here, 
     * std::vector would throw an exception if using at() 
     * or have UB if using [] */
    return -1;
}

void set_vector(int_vector *v, size_t n, int x) {
    if(v) {
        if(n >= v->size) {
            resize_vector(v, n);
        }
        v->data[n] = x;
    }
}

After which, you could do:

int_vector *v = create_vector(10);
set_vector(v, 0, 123);

I dunno, it just doesn’t seem worth the effort.