Object-orientation in C

Question

What would be a set of nifty preprocessor hacks (ANSI C89/ISO C90 compatible) which enable some kind of ugly (but usable) object-orientation in C?

I am familiar with

Answer 1

If you really thinks catefully, even standard C library use OOP - consider FILE * as an example: fopen() initializes an FILE * object, and you use it use member methods fscanf(), fprintf(), fread(), fwrite() and others, and eventually finalize it with fclose().

You can also go with the pseudo-Objective-C way which is not difficult as well:

typedef void *Class;

typedef struct __class_Foo
{
    Class isa;
    int ivar;
} Foo;

typedef struct __meta_Foo
{
    Foo *(*alloc)(void);
    Foo *(*init)(Foo *self);
    int (*ivar)(Foo *self);
    void (*setIvar)(Foo *self);
} meta_Foo;

meta_Foo *class_Foo;

void __meta_Foo_init(void) __attribute__((constructor));
void __meta_Foo_init(void)
{
    class_Foo = malloc(sizeof(meta_Foo));
    if (class_Foo)
    {
        class_Foo = {__imp_Foo_alloc, __imp_Foo_init, __imp_Foo_ivar, __imp_Foo_setIvar};
    }
}

Foo *__imp_Foo_alloc(void)
{
    Foo *foo = malloc(sizeof(Foo));
    if (foo)
    {
        memset(foo, 0, sizeof(Foo));
        foo->isa = class_Foo;
    }
    return foo;
}

Foo *__imp_Foo_init(Foo *self)
{
    if (self)
    {
        self->ivar = 42;
    }
    return self;
}
// ...

To use:

int main(void)
{
    Foo *foo = (class_Foo->init)((class_Foo->alloc)());
    printf("%d\n", (foo->isa->ivar)(foo)); // 42
    foo->isa->setIvar(foo, 60);
    printf("%d\n", (foo->isa->ivar)(foo)); // 60
    free(foo);
}

This is what may be resulted from some Objective-C code like this, if a pretty-old Objective-C-to-C translator is used:

@interface Foo : NSObject
{
    int ivar;
}
- (int)ivar;
- (void)setIvar:(int)ivar;
@end

@implementation Foo
- (id)init
{
    if (self = [super init])
    {
        ivar = 42;
    }
    return self;
}
@end

int main(void)
{
    Foo *foo = [[Foo alloc] init];
    printf("%d\n", [foo ivar]);
    [foo setIvar:60];
    printf("%d\n", [foo ivar]);
    [foo release];
}