Make Copy of structures with huge no. of pointer members

Hi,
I have a structure, that reads someting like:

Code:

---


struct _B {
    int info;
    struct _C *p4;
}

typedef struct _A{
    int a,b,c;
    int *p1;
    char *p2;
    struct _B *p3;
  /* Many more pointers */
}A;

---

Have to write a copy function,
A *make_copy(A *src);
i.e. make_copy makes a copy of 'src' and returns. Note that it should properly copy pointers also (i.e. make copy of pointer members also).

Apart from copying member by member, is there any other way to do same?

One of the (imo) little known facts about structs is that you can copy them directly in C. Might have been our super sorter iMalc that mentioned that fact in a post.

(Probably others did as well)

I don't know if that includes strings and pointer members, however.

Why not try it and see?

It will not make deep copies of any pointers, but it will copy all the shallow values.
Regardless, if you want to make deep copies of the pointers, it is not a trivial task, and no easy solution exists.

Vithal, do you *really* need to make a copy of all these structs? You can't just pass a pointer to the struct to any function that needs it?

In light of what Elysia posted, I would sure try hard not to have to copy a lot of these big structs. if the structs had different members on them that would make it even more tedious.

uggh! :(

Well, passing just pointer to struct not serving my purpose. I have a requirement where need to process msgs from API callers and this message might get queued if the system can't handle in caller's context (system too busy??). So, had caller passed pointer to structure (local variable), then queuing would crash the system. If we want to make no assumptions about caller's mem alloc scheme, want to make a copy and queue it.

Then you basically need to either create a custom, complex function which can make a copy of a struct by taking in a lot of arguments about its structure, or, you can make a simple, custom function that clones a specific structure.

Wanted to avoid writing copy function that looks into each member and does copy. Well, if no other solution exists, will do same for now.

Thanks Elysia and others for replying.

Such a generic solution is difficult to do in C. You would have to consider a more high-level language to perform such a copy without hassle.