Static allocation of opaque data types

Question

Very often malloc() is absolutely not allowed when programming for embedded systems. Most of the time I\'m pretty able to deal with this, but one thing irritates me: it keep

Answer 1

I faced a similar problem in implementing a data structure in which the header of the data structure, which is opaque, holds all the various data that needs to be carried over from operation to operation.

Since re-initialization might cause a memory leak, I wanted to make sure that data structure implementation itself never actually overwrite a point to heap allocated memory.

What I did is the following:

/** 
 * In order to allow the client to place the data structure header on the
 * stack we need data structure header size. [1/4]
**/
#define CT_HEADER_SIZE  ( (sizeof(void*) * 2)           \
                        + (sizeof(int) * 2)             \
                        + (sizeof(unsigned long) * 1)   \
                        )

/**
 * After the size has been produced, a type which is a size *alias* of the
 * header can be created. [2/4] 
**/        
struct header { char h_sz[CT_HEADER_SIZE]; };
typedef struct header data_structure_header;

/* In all the public interfaces the size alias is used. [3/4] */
bool ds_init_new(data_structure_header *ds /* , ...*/);

In the implementation file:

struct imp_header {
    void *ptr1, 
         *ptr2;
    int  i, 
         max;
    unsigned long total;
};

/* implementation proper */
static bool imp_init_new(struct imp_header *head /* , ...*/)
{
    return false; 
}

/* public interface */
bool ds_init_new(data_structure_header *ds /* , ...*/) 
{
    int i;

    /* only accept a zero init'ed header */
    for(i = 0; i < CT_HEADER_SIZE; ++i) {
        if(ds->h_sz[i] != 0) {
            return false;
        }
    }

    /* just in case we forgot something */
    assert(sizeof(data_structure_header) == sizeof(struct imp_header));

    /* Explicit conversion is used from the public interface to the
     * implementation proper.  [4/4]
     */
    return imp_init_new( (struct imp_header *)ds /* , ...*/); 
}

client side:

int foo() 
{
    data_structure_header ds = { 0 };

    ds_init_new(&ds /*, ...*/);
}