Namespaces in C

Question

Is there a way to (ab)use the C preprocessor to emulate namespaces in C?

I'm thinking something along these lines:

#define NAMESPACE name_of_ns
some_function() {
    some_other_function();
}

This would get translated to:

name_of_ns_some_function() {
    name_of_ns_some_other_function();
}

Answer 1

Another alternative would be to declare a struct to hold all your functions, and then define your functions statically. Then you'd only have to worry about name conflicts for the global name struct.

// foo.h
#ifndef FOO_H
#define FOO_H
typedef struct { 
  int (* const bar)(int, char *);
  void (* const baz)(void);
} namespace_struct;
extern namespace_struct const foo;
#endif // FOO_H

// foo.c
#include "foo.h"
static int my_bar(int a, char * s) { /* ... */ }
static void my_baz(void) { /* ... */ }
namespace_struct const foo = { my_bar, my_baz }

// main.c
#include <stdio.h>
#include "foo.h"
int main(void) {
  foo.baz();
  printf("%d", foo.bar(3, "hello"));
  return 0;
}

In the above example, my_bar and my_baz can't be called directly from main.c, only through foo.

If you have a bunch of namespaces that declare functions with the same signatures, then you can standardize your namespace struct for that set, and choose which namespace to use at runtime.

// goo.h
#ifndef GOO_H
#define GOO_H
#include "foo.h"
extern namespace_struct const goo;
#endif // GOO_H

// goo.c
#include "goo.h"
static int my_bar(int a, char * s) { /* ... */ }
static void my_baz(void) { /* ... */ }
namespace_struct const goo = { my_bar, my_baz };

// other_main.c
#include <stdio.h>
#include "foo.h"
#include "goo.h"
int main(int argc, char** argv) {
  namespace_struct const * const xoo = (argc > 1 ? foo : goo);
  xoo->baz();
  printf("%d", xoo->bar(3, "hello"));
  return 0;
}

The multiple definitions of my_bar and my_baz don't conflict, since they're defined statically, but the underlying functions are still accessible through the appropriate namespace struct.