I've been reading through this PDF on how to do object-oriented programming in C (not C++):

http://www.planetpdf.com/codecuts/pdfs/ooc.pdf

I was curious if any of you guys out there had ever tried to create an oop system or library for C, or at least had read through that PDF. I only got about a third of the way through. I was understanding it, but it was taking me so long that I finally decided it would probably be better to just use C++.

But then, I'm still something of a novice C programmer, so I thought perhaps some of you guys might have had better experiences.

Unless you have a very compelling reason to mimic the O-O paradigm in C I would recommend that you use C++ or another language that supports O-O if you feel that you require any of the O-O features.

Well in some (tough very few) special cases using plain C is necessary.

If what you need is simply use OOP features then just use C++. If you're curious, take a look at this:
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/cpp/PolyC.aspx
http://ldeniau.home.cern.ch/ldeniau/html/oopc/oopc.html

I would also recommend you to take a look at the FreeBSD kernel sources, networking code is written using polymorphism in plain C and they implemented it in a very simple way. Take a look at the ifnet structure: http://fxr.watson.org/fxr/source/net...FREEBSD62#L112

I fail to see from either of those articles why it is "necessary".

Edit:
Ok that edit is better.

Here is a tiny object-oriented C library for dynamic strings. It works like PHP's variable variables ($$var) and Python dictionaries to give you strings with names that are also strings.

It supports the following methods:

dictionary_add()
dictionary_print()
dictionary_destroy()

Simplified example:

dictionary_add("word","some definition");
dictionary_print("word");//prints "some definition" to the terminal
dictionary_destroy();//please destroy after use.

http://www.thenerdshow.com/?page=dictionary

For other pseudo object-oriented C programs, I refer you to the mess of gtk, glib, glade, gobject and friends.

What the document describes is how to implement OOP in C. That is not that strange, after all any (compiled) OOP language is compiled into machine executable statements, and there is no reason why such a thing cannot be written in C which also compiles into machine executable statements.

However, ONLY if your goal is to learn how to develop an OO language in C, it might be worthwhile to study this document and follow the implementation.

For all other purposes it should sufficient to use an OOP language if you want to write OO programs. All the work has already been done and implemented in the compiler.

jlinkels

I Use OO ideas in kernel development all the time.

borrowing the ideas of the O-O paradigm is fine but trying to implement some of the concepts in pure C would miss the point, rather than making the code cleaner you would have, as Churchill once said, "a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma"

C++ is sometimes unadvised in kernel mode. That's why the FreeBSD developers did it in plain C. Even microsoft warns about C++ issues in kernel mode: http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/driver/kernel/KMcode.mspx
However this only happens in particular cases that only advanced programmers face, most people should just use OO languages.