C equivalent of vector?

I need to do something in C, but I am familiar with C++ where I could use a vector to store things of any type and access them by an index #. Is there a fairly simple way to get similar functionality in C or does it depend on the specific data type you want to use?

Without creating your own vector type, you'd need to use an array, which is also available in C++. You can declare an array of any type, so if you need a struct, you can make an array of that struct.

Nothing but a plain old array I'm afraid.
However in C99 you can use a variable when declaring the size of the array I believe.

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Originally Posted by dougwilliams

I need to do something in C, but I am familiar with C++ where I could use a vector to store things of any type and access them by an index #. Is there a fairly simple way to get similar functionality in C or does it depend on the specific data type you want to use?

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If you want a dynamic vector (one that grows as you add more elements to it), you'll need to implement it yourself. Otherwise, just use an array.

Unfortunately, C has no templates so you have to write code to deal specifically with different kinds of objects, since they are all of different sizes and types. You can write a function that handles a lot of this for you, but it's not going to be nearly as pretty as the equivalent using C++ vectors.

It's possible to boil it all down to a few very simple-looking macro calls.

I was fortunate enough to find a custom method for doing this with my data type:

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