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Nat!

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Inheritance in C would need a simple compiler hack

How I usually do it

I used to and often still do inheritance like schemes in C like this

#define X_BASE  \
   char   *name


struct x
{
   X_BASE;
};


// y inherits from x
#define Y_BASE \
   X_BASE;     \
   int   info

struct y
{
   Y_BASE;
};

and so on. This means that the member layout of struct x and struct y is identical for the common members. Therefore you can use a function operating on struct x also on struct y (with casting).

e.g.


static inline char   *x_get_name( struct x *p)
{
   return( p->name);
}

static inline char   *y_get_name( struct y *p)
{
   return( x_get_name((struct x *) p));
}

As you can imagine, this necessitates a lot of casting, when using struct x functions from struct y code.

An alternative way

struct x
{
   char   *name;
};

struct y
{
   struct x   base;
   int        info;
};

It’s hopefully obvious that here

struct y   a_y;

assert( (void *) &a_y == (void *) &a_y.base);

the only difference between &a_y and &a_y.base is the pointer type. The pointer value is the same. Now I know this and the compiler knows this too.

So imagine the compiler wouldn’t complain on pointer type if the struct doesn’t match but the first member does. This would make this kind of inheritance convenient, because I wouldn’t have to cast so much.

In the example above, one would not need or want to code y_get_name

It’s not technically wrong, the pointer does match. In this sense the pointer to a struct y has really a dual type, it matches struct y * and struct x *.

Furthermore struct y * will eventually also match char **, because char * is the first member of struct x. This is also not wrong but intended.

After all this is C and not C++, right ?

Avoiding the char ** match

struct root
{
};

struct x
{
   struct root   root;
   char          *name;
};

struct y
{
   struct x  base;
   char      *info;
};

Continue to C Inheritance continued, putting functions into a struct


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