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/**
@page libtalloc_dts Chapter 3: Dynamic type system
@section dts Dynamic type system
Generic programming in the C language is very difficult. There is no inheritance
nor templates known from object oriented languages. There is no dynamic type
system. Therefore, generic programming in this language is usually done by
type-casting a variable to <code>void*</code> and transferring it through
a generic function to a specialized callback as illustrated on the next listing.
@code
void generic_function(callback_fn cb, void *pvt)
{
/* do some stuff and call the callback */
cb(pvt);
}
void specific_callback(void *pvt)
{
struct specific_struct *data;
data = (struct specific_struct*)pvt;
/* ... */
}
void specific_function()
{
struct specific_struct data;
generic_function(callback, &data);
}
@endcode
Unfortunately, the type information is lost as a result of this type cast. The
compiler cannot check the type during the compilation nor are we able to do it
at runtime. Providing an invalid data type to the callback will result in
unexpected behaviour (not necessarily a crash) of the application. This mistake
is usually hard to detect because it is not the first thing which comes the
mind.
As we already know, every talloc context contains a name. This name is available
at any time and it can be used to determine the type of a context even if we
lose the type of a variable.
Although the name of the context can be set to any arbitrary string, the best
way of using it to simulate the dynamic type system is to set it directly to the
type of the variable.
It is recommended to use one of talloc() and talloc_array() (or its
variants) to create the context as they set its name to the name of the
given type automatically.
If we have a context with such as a name, we can use two similar functions that
do both the type check and the type cast for us:
- talloc_get_type()
- talloc_get_type_abort()
@section dts-examples Examples
The following example will show how generic programming with talloc is handled -
if we provide invalid data to the callback, the program will be aborted. This
is a sufficient reaction for such an error in most applications.
@code
void foo_callback(void *pvt)
{
struct foo *data = talloc_get_type_abort(pvt, struct foo);
/* ... */
}
int do_foo()
{
struct foo *data = talloc_zero(NULL, struct foo);
/* ... */
return generic_function(foo_callback, data);
}
@endcode
But what if we are creating a service application that should be running for the
uptime of a server, we may want to abort the application during the development
process (to make sure the error is not overlooked) and try to recover from the
error in the customer release. This can be achieved by creating a custom abort
function with a conditional build.
@code
void my_abort(const char *reason)
{
fprintf(stderr, "talloc abort: %s\n", reason);
#ifdef ABORT_ON_TYPE_MISMATCH
abort();
#endif
}
@endcode
The usage of talloc_get_type_abort() would be then:
@code
talloc_set_abort_fn(my_abort);
TALLOC_CTX *ctx = talloc_new(NULL);
char *str = talloc_get_type_abort(ctx, char);
if (str == NULL) {
/* recovery code */
}
/* talloc abort: ../src/main.c:25: Type mismatch:
name[talloc_new: ../src/main.c:24] expected[char] */
@endcode
*/
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