dotc

use node-style #require and #export directives in c!

dotc is a c/c++ preprocessor that copies the semantics of node.js's module lookup algorithm without modifying anything else about the c language

example

single export

The first form of exports uses an #export= directive to export exactly 1 thing from a file.

In foo.c we'll export the foo() function:

#export= foo
int foo (int n) {
    return n * 111;
}

then use #require to load "foo.c" into the local token f in main.c:

#include "stdio.h"
#include "stdlib.h"
 
#require "./foo.c" as f
 
int main(int argc, char **argv) {
    printf("%d\n", f(atoi(argv[1])));
    return 0;
}

Now use the dotc command to compile main.c with gcc:

$ dotc main.c -o main
$ ./main 3
333

multi export

We can also export multiple declarations from a file and expose them through property-lookup (dot) syntax.

Suppose we have a file foobar.c that has 2 exports: foo and bar:

#export foo
int foo (int n) {
    return n * 111;
}
 
#export bazzy as bar
int bazzy (int n) {
    return n * 10;
}

Note that in the second form, #export bazzy as bar, the exported token name need not match the local definition name.

Now in main.c we can reference both functions under the FB name:

#include "stdio.h"
#include "stdlib.h"
 
#require "./foobar.c" as FB
 
int main(int argc, char **argv) {
    int f = FB.foo(atoi(argv[1]));
    int b = FB.bar(atoi(argv[2]));
    printf("%d\n", f + b);
    return 0;
}

syntax

To import a relative (from the requiring file) module, do:

#require "./foo.c" as foo

To import a module installed with npm, do:

#require "beepboop.c" as bb

To export a single item from your module, do:

#export= foo

To export localname that requiring files will see as name, do:

#export localname as name

If localname and name are the same, you can just do:

#export name

under the hood

Files loaded with #require are automatically wrapped in a namespace {} block to keep their internal methods and declarations from leaking out into the global namespace.

We can print out the output of the preprocessing step from the previous example code with dotc pre to see the wrapping and transformation:

$ dotc pre main.c
#include "stdio.h"
#include "stdlib.h"
 
namespace _177d2db2 {
int foo (int n) {
    return n * 111;
}
};
 
int main(int argc, char **argv) {
    printf("%d\n", (_177d2db2::foo)(atoi(argv[1])));
    return 0;
}

When you run dotc main.c (or dotc build main.c), this is the code that gcc compiles for you. If you want to compile with gcc yourself, you could just do:

$ dotc pre main.c | gcc -x c++ - -o main
$ ./main 4
444

The -x c++ is necessary for now because c doesn't have namespace {} blocks.

When somebody writes a namespace transform we can drop the forced c++ upgrade.

graceful upgrades

Similar to UMD in browser code, we can write libraries that gracefully upgrade into dotc exports mode by checking for DOTC in an #ifdef:

#ifdef DOTC
#export= foo
#endif
 
int foo (int n) {
    return n * 111;
}

packages

finding c modules

You can use the dotc search command to search npm:

substack : ~ $ dotc search upper
NAME         DESCRIPTION                       AUTHOR     DATE              VERSION KEYWORDS
uppercase.c  uppercase a string in-place in c  =substack  2013-09-19 04:21  0.0.0  dotc c c++ pre
substack : ~ $ 

dotc search just filters npm search by packages ending in .c, .cc, .cpp, and .cxx.

publishing c modules

To publish a dotc module, just pick a name and add .c to the end! For example: hyperset.c.

Then create a package.json file with a "main.c" field set to the file that you want to resolve when somebody does #require "yourpackage.c" as yp.

npm?

npm? Isn't that for javascript?

Yes, but:

• native node modules are written in c++
• npm already exists
• npm installs packages in a way that avoids dependency hell

Just make sure to suffix a .c at the end of your package name so that we can more easily distinguish c packages from javascript packages.

install

First install node. This will give you the npm command that you can use to install dotc itself by doing:

npm install -g dotc

license

MIT