STL-like Vectors for pure C

Well, not really. This implementation has a lot of pitfalls. After all it is very easy to shoot yourself in the foot! Don't forget you are using C.

Why?

STL vector is a really useful template abstraction. For instance the dynamic memory allocation of vector makes it so easy to parse input of an arbitrary size. This is a headache in pure C.

How to use it?

We wrap vector functions by using a couple of #defines. Use the following to perform operations:

• VEC_INIT(type, n): Takes in datatype type and returns a vector.

• VEC_PUSH_BACK(type, v, e): Takes in datatype type, a vector v and an element e to push into v. Amortized insertion time O(n)

• VEC_POP_BACK(type, v): Takes in datatype type, a vector v. Pops the last element. Make sure to manually store the element to be popped before. This function should only be used for deallocating memory if you want to shrink the size of vector.

• VEC_CLEAR(v):Takes in a vector v. Deallocates all the memory used by the vector.

• VEC_SET(type v, i, e): Similar to v[i] = e.

• VEC_GET(type v, i): similar to v[i].

See vec_test.c file for a sample usage.

How to compile?

make vec_test