dynarray

A generic dynamic array implementation in C. A dynarray of type T can be passed to any function that operates on vanilla T arrays. Inspiration taken from this article by solarianprogrammer.

Example Usage

#include "dynarray.h"

int *v = dynarray_create(int);

for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
    dynarray_push(v, i);
    dynarray_push_rval(v, 100 - i);
}

for (int i = 0; i < dynarray_length(v); i++) {
    printf("v[%d] -> %d\n", i, v[i]);
}

dynarray_destroy(v);

Output:

v[0] -> 0
v[1] -> 100
v[2] -> 1
v[3] -> 99
...
v[18] -> 9
v[19] -> 91

Memory Layout

The array is heap-allocated and is prefixed with a three-field header containing the buffer's capacity, length, and stride.

• The stride is calculated at creation time as sizeof(T) where T is the datatype you intend to store.
• The capacity field stores the buffer's size.
• The length field keeps track of the number of elements stored in the buffer.

Macros defined in dynarray.h allow the capacity, length, and stride attributes to be accessed.

A dynarray is referred to only by a pointer to the first element in its buffer. This allows a dynarray to be passed to any function that operates on regular C-arrays.