[SOLVED] About polymorphism in C

v3ct0r · 10-12-2013, 03:58 AM

Hey guys, I defined a stack data structure a couple days ago,

Code:

struct linknode {
        elemtype data;
        struct linknode *
                last;
};

struct linkstack {
        struct linknode *top;
};
typedef struct linknode *lnode;
typedef struct linkstack *lstack;

;
And I've also defined some functions for these two.

Look I didnt assign what elemtype is in my structure. Now I have to use two stack and their elemtype are different(one is double, one is char)!!!

The problem is I dont wanna re-write two kind of stack, and replace all elemtype with char(or double). To do this, I'll have to implement functions for each one.

Is there a way out?

Some guys says I should use (void *) for elemtype, but there are two problem with it.

1: gcc dont let me assign double to void *.

2: void *data is a pointer, it must point to somewhere(probably in heap memory).
When I need to change the data 'data' pointer to, and 'data' probably dont know that.
eg:

Code:

int c =3;
void *a = c;
c = 4;     //I need c to change for something else, of course.

So guys, is there really a way out?

v3ct0r · 10-12-2013, 05:57 AM

Ha, I found that type casting just slove my problem, though it looks a little weird. Never mind this thread, pal.

jpollard · 10-12-2013, 06:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by xeechou

Ha, I found that type casting just slove my problem, though it looks a little weird. Never mind this thread, pal.

You are making an assumption there.

On most systems the sizeof(double) is the same as sizeof(void *)... But that isn't true on 32 bit systems. Fortunately, sizeof(double) > sizeof(void *) on those systems.

You would do better to use a tagged structure. Something like:

Code:

struct data {
    int     tag;        /* the tag */
    union {
        double   df;    /* tag = 0 */
        void     *ptr;  /* tag = 1 */
        ...
    }datum;
}

This avoids the casting, AND you can identify which data type you actually have in the tag value. For instance, if tag is 0 (for double) then your code will know not to use the datum.ptr reference--- it is invalid. And if the tag is 1, the code should not datum.df -- it is likely an invalid format for a double.