Hidden features of C

Answer 1

Interlacing structures like Duff's Device:

strncpy(to, from, count)
char *to, *from;
int count;
{
    int n = (count + 7) / 8;
    switch (count % 8) {
    case 0: do { *to = *from++;
    case 7:      *to = *from++;
    case 6:      *to = *from++;
    case 5:      *to = *from++;
    case 4:      *to = *from++;
    case 3:      *to = *from++;
    case 2:      *to = *from++;
    case 1:      *to = *from++;
               } while (--n > 0);
    }
}

Answer 2

Struct assignment is cool. Many people don't seem to realize that structs are values too, and can be assigned around, there is no need to use memcpy(), when a simple assignment does the trick.

For example, consider some imaginary 2D graphics library, it might define a type to represent an (integer) screen coordinate:

typedef struct {
   int x;
   int y;
} Point;

Now, you do things that might look "wrong", like write a function that creates a point initialized from function arguments, and returns it, like so:

Point point_new(int x, int y)
{
  Point p;
  p.x = x;
  p.y = y;
  return p;
}

This is safe, as long (of course) as the return value is copied by value using struct assignment:

Point origin;
origin = point_new(0, 0);

In this way you can write quite clean and object-oriented-ish code, all in plain standard C.

Answer 3

Compile-time assumption-checking using enums: Stupid example, but can be really useful for libraries with compile-time configurable constants.

#define D 1
#define DD 2

enum CompileTimeCheck
{
    MAKE_SURE_DD_IS_TWICE_D = 1/(2*(D) == (DD)),
    MAKE_SURE_DD_IS_POW2    = 1/((((DD) - 1) & (DD)) == 0)
};

Answer 4

I'm very fond of designated initializers, added in C99 (and supported in gcc for a long time):

#define FOO 16
#define BAR 3

myStructType_t myStuff[] = {
    [FOO] = { foo1, foo2, foo3 },
    [BAR] = { bar1, bar2, bar3 },
    ...

The array initialization is no longer position dependent. If you change the values of FOO or BAR, the array initialization will automatically correspond to their new value.

Answer 5

My favorite "hidden" feature of C, is the usage of %n in printf to write back to the stack. Normally printf pops the parameter values from the stack based on the format string, but %n can write them back.

Check out section 3.4.2 here. Can lead to a lot of nasty vulnerabilities.

Answer 6

initializing structure to zero

struct mystruct a = {0};

this will zero all stucture elements.