Type-safe generic data structures in plain-old C?

Question

I have done far more C++ programming than \"plain old C\" programming. One thing I sorely miss when programming in plain C is type-safe generic data structures, which are p

Answer 1

I am using option 2 for a couple of high performance collections, and it is extremely time-consuming working through the amount of macro logic needed to do anything truly compile-time generic and worth using. I am doing this purely for raw performance (games). An X-macros approach is used.

A painful issue that constantly comes up with Option 2 is, "Assuming some finite number of options, such as 8/16/32/64 bit keys, do I make said value a constant and define several functions each with a different element of this set of values that constant can take on, or do I just make it a member variable?" The former means a less performant instruction cache since you have a lot of repeated functions with just one or two numbers different, while the latter means you have to reference allocated variables which in the worst case means a data cache miss. Since Option 1 is purely dynamic, you will make such values member variables without even thinking about it. This truly is micro-optimisation, though.

Also bear in mind the trade-off between returning pointers vs. values: the latter is most performant when the size of the data item is less than or equal to pointer size; whereas if the data item is larger, it is most likely better to return pointers than to force a copy of a large object by returning value.

I would strongly suggest going for Option 1 in any scenario where you are not 100% certain that collection performance will be your bottleneck. Even with my use of Option 2, my collections library supplies a "quick setup" which is like Option 1, i.e. use of void * values in my list and map. This is sufficient for 90+% of circumstances.