Thread: Deep copy

Hello!
I'd like to know if it's possible to create a function that performs a deep copy of a struct variable without being bound to its particular internal representation. In other words, a function that (with enough informations) can perform a deep copy of any struct that it receives as a parameter, regardless of its type.
Thanks in advance!

Lookup the memcpy() function ... It's part of standard C and copies anything you tell it to.

Ahh, but if your struct has pointers to objects, theoretically deep copy has to make a copy of what is pointed to as well, not just the address of what the source struct pointed to. That's what makes it so deep. Again, like your iterator pattern, you will probably need to write a deep copy for each of your structs and use some sort of function pointer stuff to implement a generic interface.

Can I ask why you're trying to turn C into C++? C is not and never was intended to do OO stuff. You can hack some of it in there, but it's not really well built for that.

O_o

No.

Soma

Originally Posted by anduril462

Ahh, but if your struct has pointers to objects, theoretically deep copy has to make a copy of what is pointed to as well, not just the address of what the source struct pointed to. That's what makes it so deep. Again, like your iterator pattern, you will probably need to write a deep copy for each of your structs and use some sort of function pointer stuff to implement a generic interface.

Can I ask why you're trying to turn C into C++? C is not and never was intended to do OO stuff. You can hack some of it in there, but it's not really well built for that.

Thanks again!
As for your question, I'm not trying to turn C in C++. I have a university work to do that involves the creation of a library that adapts the design patterns of OO languages to be used on a non OO language like C. During the work I found that through low level programming some of the features of OO languages can be replicated in C, but in some other cases (i.e. in the case of reflection) this seemed impossible to me. But my knowledge of C is quite limited, so I decided to ask here, where there are people that surely know C much better than me!

I have a university work to do that involves the creation of a library that adapts the design patterns of OO languages to be used on a non OO language like C

Bummer! I was hoping I could dissuade you from such folly.

I've actually messed around with implementing some of these features before, and it's definitely not easy. I somehow forgot to mention a few potentially useful preprocessor features (if you're not already using them). First is the ## command for token concatenation. The second is what they call x-macros: C preprocessor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. I've used them for a number of things like supporting an isA() function for checking type, etc. Good luck!