Hidden features of C

Answer 1

Variable size automatic variables are also useful in some cases. These were added i nC99 and have been supported in gcc for a long time.

void foo(uint32_t extraPadding) {
    uint8_t commBuffer[sizeof(myProtocol_t) + extraPadding];

You end up with a buffer on the stack with room for the fixed-size protocol header plus variable size data. You can get the same effect with alloca(), but this syntax is more compact.

You have to make sure extraPadding is a reasonable value before calling this routine, or you end up blowing the stack. You'd have to sanity check the arguments before calling malloc or any other memory allocation technique, so this isn't really unusual.

Answer 2

Constant string concatenation

I was quite surprised not seeing it allready in the answers, as all compilers I know of support it, but many programmers seems to ignore it. Sometimes it's really handy and not only when writing macros.

Use case I have in my current code: I have a #define PATH "/some/path/" in a configuration file (really it is setted by the makefile). Now I want to build the full path including filenames to open ressources. It just goes to:

fd = open(PATH "/file", flags);

Instead of the horrible, but very common:

char buffer[256];
snprintf(buffer, 256, "%s/file", PATH);
fd = open(buffer, flags);

Notice that the common horrible solution is:

• three times as long
• much less easy to read
• much slower
• less powerfull at it set to an arbitrary buffer size limit (but you would have to use even longer code to avoid that without constant strings contatenation).
• use more stack space

Answer 3

The comma operator isn't widely used. It can certainly be abused, but it can also be very useful. This use is the most common one:

for (int i=0; i<10; i++, doSomethingElse())
{
  /* whatever */
}

But you can use this operator anywhere. Observe:

int j = (printf("Assigning variable j\n"), getValueFromSomewhere());

Each statement is evaluated, but the value of the expression will be that of the last statement evaluated.

Answer 4

C99-style variable argument macros, aka

#define ERR(name, fmt, ...)   fprintf(stderr, "ERROR " #name ": " fmt "\n", \
                                  __VAR_ARGS__)

which would be used like

ERR(errCantOpen, "File %s cannot be opened", filename);

Here I also use the stringize operator and string constant concatentation, other features I really like.

Answer 5

I never used bit fields but they sound cool for ultra-low-level stuff.

struct cat {
    unsigned int legs:3;  // 3 bits for legs (0-4 fit in 3 bits)
    unsigned int lives:4; // 4 bits for lives (0-9 fit in 4 bits)
    // ...
};

cat make_cat()
{
    cat kitty;
    kitty.legs = 4;
    kitty.lives = 9;
    return kitty;
}

This means that sizeof(cat) can be as small as sizeof(char).

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Incorporated comments by Aaron and leppie, thanks guys.

Answer 6

gcc has a number of extensions to the C language that I enjoy, which can be found here. Some of my favorites are function attributes. One extremely useful example is the format attribute. This can be used if you define a custom function that takes a printf format string. If you enable this function attribute, gcc will do checks on your arguments to ensure that your format string and arguments match up and will generate warnings or errors as appropriate.

int my_printf (void *my_object, const char *my_format, ...)
            __attribute__ ((format (printf, 2, 3)));