What is this?

This is a simple example of implemented some object-oriented design principles into the development of C applications -- particularly in creation of data structures. This was mostly done in an effort to better learn how languages like C++ implement features like polymorphism -- I don't typically go the whole route of implementing virtual method tables in most of my code, unless it proves beneficial in some way or another.

About the repository

Each of the source files in this repository provides an implementation for an interface which is defined in the corresponding header file. The header files define two structures, each: One corresponding to the type, and one corresponding to the virtual method table for that type. With the current implementation there is a bug in that the virtual method table does not work correctly when casting to parent structure types. I.e.,

    object* real_str = string_create("Hello, World");
    char* cstr = real_str->vmt->to_cstring();

Will invoke object->vmt->to_cstring(). There are several possible fixes for this, depeding on desired functionality. One such fix would be to overwrite the base vmt pointer, and require an explicit call to the parent method; this is similar to what would be expected in real object oriented languaged like C++:

    MyBaseClass::method()