A collection of various utility functions, implemented in C.
The utlib library is a collection of simple utility functions addressing several fields of application, ranging from basic string manipulation, random number generation and byte order conversion to high resolution scalar time handling.
Utlib is designed to depend as little as possible on operating system specifics, stick to ISO C as close as feasible and only resort to POSIX functionality where necessary. It should build and work with little or no tweaking on most modern Linux and BSD distributions. So far it has however only been tested on Debian-like GNU/Linux and FreeBSD systems.
After re-implementing various utility functions time and time again over the past decades, I decided to finally carry out the long standing plan to put together a library containing decent reference implementations of those functions.
While equivalent functionality is available in many other utility libraries, these often come tied to general application frameworks or burdened with other considerable overhead, hence the motivation to create a lightweight alternative that is not entangled with other 3rd party tools or libraries.
The following table contains a list of header files supplied by utlib along with a short description of their respective purpose:
| Header | Functionality |
|---|---|
base16.h |
base16 (hexadecimal) data en- and decoding |
bendian.h |
byte order conversion |
getopts.h |
alternative command-line option parser |
logging.h |
log formatted messages to files or system log |
ntime.h |
clock time in nanosecond resolution |
prng.h |
fast 64-bit pseudo random number generator |
str_escape.h |
C-style string escaping; URL encoding |
str_icmp.h |
case insensitive string compare |
str_trim.h |
string trimming (whitespace and other) |
str_unescape.h |
C-style string un-escaping |
utf8_decode.h |
UTF-8 to UTF-32 transcoding |
utf8_encode.h |
UTF-32 to UTF-8 transcoding |
utf8_locale.h |
locale related utilities |
In order to use utlib in your project, you should:
-
Make the utlib include path known to the compiler, e.g.:
-I/usr/local/include/utlib/ -
Include the appropriate header files in source modules that intend use it, e.g.:
#include <ntime.h> -
Make the utlib library path known to the linker and instruct it to link your executable with utlib, e.g.:
-L/usr/local/lib/utlib -lut
After running make config the build environment settings can be
customized by editing the generated config.mk file. The tools
shortcuts declared there should also give an idea which utilities
are required to build utlib. A subsequent make && make install
will build and install utlib. The build system will always build
both a static library as well as a shared object.
NOTE: If the BUILD_XTRA variable is set to 0 in config.mk, the
following modules will be excluded from the build: bendian.h,
getopts.h, logging.h, ntime.h, utf8_locale.h. This may aid
in building the remaining modules for freestanding (non-hosted)
implementations.
Building utlib under Linux requires the following tools:
- Mandatory: gcc or clang, make, awk, sed
- Optional: tar, txt2man
$ git clone https://github.com/irrwahn/utlib.git
$ cd utlib
$ make config
$ # customize config.mk
$ make all
$ make install
Building utlib under FreeBSD requires the following tools:
- Mandatory: clang, gmake, gawk, gsed
- Optional: gtar, txt2man
$ git clone https://github.com/irrwahn/utlib.git
$ cd utlib
$ gmake config
$ # customize config.mk
$ gmake all
$ gmake install
| Target | Effect |
|---|---|
all |
build library and docs |
config |
(re-)create config.mk |
doc |
build only documentation |
test |
build and run tests |
clean |
remove build artifacts |
distclean |
remove even config.mk |
examples |
build example programs |
lib |
build only library |
tarball |
create distribution archive |
install |
install utlib to prefix |
uninstall |
remove utlib from prefix |
| Version | Comment |
|---|---|
| 0.0.1 | "For the record" |
| 0.0.2 | "Enter Santa" |
| 0.0.3 | "Happy 12018"* (sic!)* |
- Fork it!
- Create your feature branch:
git checkout -b my-new-feature - Commit your changes:
git commit -am 'Add some feature' - Push to the branch:
git push origin my-new-feature - Submit a pull request
See the CREDITS file for a list of people who have contributed
to the project.
Utlib is distributed under the Modified ("3-clause") BSD License.
Consult the LICENSE file for more information.