libHX is a C library (with some C++ bindings available) that provides data structures and functions commonly needed, such as maps, deques, linked lists, string formatting and autoresizing, option and config file parsing, type checking casts and more.
libHX aids in quickly writing up C and C++ data processing programs, by consolidating tasks that often happen to be open-coded, such as (simple) config file reading, option parsing, directory traversal, and others, into a library. The focus is on reducing the amount of time (and secondarily, the amount of code) a developer has to spend for otherwise implementing such.
Quicklinks
- Many Linux distributions already ship packages — just use their package system! See Distro Availability Matrix for distros that we know to have it.
Components (by all means not all)
- Documentation (pdf)
- maps/sets (
HXmap_*)Originally created to provide a data structure like Perl's associative arrays. Multiple models and underlying storage data structures are available (unordered hash-based map, ordered rbtree).
- linked lists (
HXdeque_*,HXlist_*,HXclist_*)Doubly-linked lists are suitable for both providing stack and queue functionality. Different implementations are available for use, depending on situation.
- directory handling (
HXdir_*)HXdir provides for opendir-readdir-closedir semantics. Windows uses a different kind, so it had to be naturally covered up. On the other hand, Solaris's
readdir()implementation is nasty in terms of memory management. HXdir covers up these discrepancies and provides a sane Linux-style readdir.Convenience functions
mkdir(create all missing parents),rrmdir(rm -Rf) are also available. - string formatter with placeholders (
HXformat_*)HXformat is something in the direction of
printf(), but the argument list is not implemented by means of varargs, so is flexible even beyond compile time. You can change the format string — in fact, just let the user configuration provide it — without having to worry about argument evaluation problems. Positional and optional arguments are simply freely choosable. - memory containers, auto-sizing string ops (
HXmc_*)At the cost of slightly increased number memory allocations as you work with the buffers, the hmc collection of functions provide scripting-level semantics for strings. Appending to a string is simply
hmc_strcat(&s, "123")[cf.$s .= "123"], without having to worry about overflowing a buffer. - option parsing (
HXoption_*)Put blunt, libpopt failed to do some elementary things and there was no maintainer to fix it. Well, it's packaged with rpm which already diverged in all distros.
HXoption is table- and callback-based, much like popt. - shellconfig parser (
HXshconfig_*)Parsers shconfig files. Their format is a subset of shell code. Files in
/etc/sysconfigare commonly shconfig-style. - common string operations
basename,chomp,dirname,getl(ine),split,strlower/-upper,str*trim,strsep,strsep2, etc.