Modern Standard Library for C, that is both portable and performant.
These libraries are still heavily under development as I experiment with using them in my own projects. There is very little documentation as of yet and breaking changes might be introduced at any point.
Most libraries are currently also not fully functional yet. There are probably a host of bugs and lots of missing features. It is not recommended to use this library for production development yet.
Unlike the original stb-libraries, all libraries here depend on the ail.h file, so you should always include that file along with all other libraries you want from here.
All libraries are written in C11 (often even C99). C++ portability is not a high priority right now.
I'm writing these libraries primarily for myself. I will thus add features that I find useful in a design-style that I like. Alternative usecases are secondary to me.
The file Predefined_Macros.md also contains a list of useful, predefined macros in C
| Library | Description |
|---|---|
| ail.h | Common definitions used by all other libraries. This file should always be included |
| ail_hm.h | Generic Hashmap implementation, where keys and values can be of any type |
| ail_bench.h | Benchmarking |
| ail_alloc.h | Custom Allocators |
| ail_sv.h | Simple String-View |
| ail_md.h | Memory Debugging Utility (slightly modified version of Eskil Steenberg's Forge) |
| ail_buf.h | Simple Read-Write Buffer implementation |
| ail_ring.h | Simple Ring-Buffer implementation |
| ail_fs.h | Cross-Platform File-System Functions |
| ail_time.h | Cross-Platform Time functions |
| ail_build.h | A library for building C programs in C itself |
| ail_math.h | Mathematical functions. The file itself is generated (but readable) code by ./gen/math_gen.c |
| ail_pm.h | Pattern Matching Library. Currently supports Regex & Glob Patterns |
| ail_gui.h | DEPRECATED: GUI-Library for use with Raylib (can only be compiled when raylib.h is already included) |
TBD
TBD
TBD
All libraries here follow the following conventions. Knowing these can make usage more intuitive (especially while documentation is still lacking):
- Everything (except the type macros in
ail.h) is prefixed with the name of the library (e.g.ail_hm_new). This is done because C99 has no feature for namespacing - All functions use snake case (this is not consisten across all libraries yet)
- Macros are upper-case, unless they are meant to be used like normal functions
- Upper-case parameters in a macro definition are Types
- Parameters to a macro are never meant to be pointers unless they are called
...Ptr(eg.daPtr)
There are currently implementation for generic dynamic arrays (prefixed with ail_da in ail.h) and generic hashmaps (ail_hm.h). Both are implemented in very similar ways.
To be generic, they use duck-typing via macros. Thus, any structure that contains the same fields as my dynamic arrays or my hashmaps, can be treated like one.
Instead of having to create a new structure each time, you can simply use AIL_DA(T), where T is the type of the elements in your array (same for hashmaps with AIL_HM(K, V), where K, V are the types for the keys and values). This macro translates to a specific name for the necessary structure.
Some common structures (like AIL_DA(char)) are already predefined and can just be used. Other structures still need to be defined of course, which can be done with the macro AIL_DA_INIT(T). Since the initialization macro translates to a type-definition, it neds to be put in your file's global scope. You can see test/ail_da.c for an example usage.
The main benefit of this approach is that you can use any structure that names its fields in the right way as a dynamic array or hashmap. Further, the types of dynamic arrays / hashmaps become very explicit in the code, when variables are defined with AIL_DA(char) x;.
It's the shortform for my github name ArtInLines.