Default values on arguments in C functions and function overloading in C

Question

Converting a C++ lib to ANSI C and it seems like though ANSI C doesn't support default values for function variables or am I mistaken? What I want is something like

int funcName(int foo, bar* = NULL);

Also, is function overloading possible in ANSI C?

Would need

const char* foo_property(foo_t* /* this */, int /* property_number*/);

const char* foo_property(foo_t* /* this */, const char* /* key */, int /* iter */);

Could of course just name them differently but being used to C++ I kinda used to function overloading.

Answer 1

No, Standard C does not support either. Why do you feel you need to convert your C++ code to C? That could get quite tricky - I'd have thought writing wrappers would be the way to go, if your C++ must be callable from C.

Answer 2

Neither of default values or function overloading exists in ANSI C, so you'll have to solve it in a different way.

Answer 3

As far as I know ANSI C doesn't directly support function overloading or default arguments. The standard substitute for overloading is adding suffixes to the function name indicating the argument types. For example, in OpenGL, a "3fv" suffix to a function name means the function takes a vector of three floats.

Default arguments can be viewed as a special case of function overloading.

Answer 4

You can't so easily since C does not support them. The simpler way to get "fake overloading" is using suffixes as already said... default values could be simulated using variable arguments function, specifying the number of args passed in, and programmatically giving default to missing one, e.g.:

 aType aFunction(int nargs, ...)
 {
   // "initialization" code and vars
   switch(nargs)
   {
     case 0:
         // all to default values... e.g.
         aVar1 = 5; // ...
         break;
     case 1:
         aVar1 = va_arg(arglist, int); //...
         // initialize aVar2, 3, ... to defaults...
         break;
     // ...
   }
 }

Also overloading can be simulated using var args with extra informations to be added and passed and extracode... basically reproducing a minimalist object oriented runtime ... Another solution (or indeed the same but with different approach) could be using tags: each argument is a pair argument type + argument (an union on the whole set of possible argument type), there's a special terminator tag (no need to specify how many args you're passing), and of course you always need "collaboration" from the function you're calling, i.e. it must contain extra code to parse the tags and choose the actual function to be done (it behaves like a sort of dispatcher)

Answer 5

You'll have to declare each C++ overloaded function differently in C because C doesn't do name mangling. In your case "foo_property1" "foo_property2".