Overview
mLib is a collection of bits of code I've found handy in various
- programs. With a few very minor exceptions, the routines are
- highly portable, and mostly strictly conformant.
+ programs. Once upon a time, almost all of the code was nearly-
+ strictly conforming C. Since then, a big pile of Unix-specific
+ code's been added, with a particularly strong networking
+ emphasis. The Unix-specific code is targetted at sensible
+ POSIX-conforming systems, and should port easily.
My programming style is probably what you'd describe as
`unconventional'. I'm skeptical about object-orientation, and
not a huge fan of over-hiding information of any kind. The
- structure and interface of the library reflects these views.
+ structure and interface of the library reflects these views. On
+ the other hand, I like documentation quite a lot.
+
+
+Documentation
There is now a (hopefully fairly good) set of manual pages for
mLib. The manual isn't installed by default since it takes a
(after everything else is built, obviously).
+ There's also documentation in the header files. The header file
+ comments were, in general, written at the same time as the code.
+ This has the disadvantage that they focus at a fairly low level,
+ and use terminology relating to the implementation rather than
+ the interface.
+
+ The header file comments can be handy for quick browsing.
+ However, the manual pages are considered the authoritative
+ source of information about the programming interface. If you
+ have to look at the source code, it usually means that my
+ documentation or interface design is wrong.
+
Quick tour
function), and permits arbitrary data blocks in both the
keys and values. It seems fairly quick.
+ * `hash.h' provides the underpinnings of the `sym' hashtable.
+ It's a completely generic hashtable skeleton. It provides
+ the basics like rehashing when the table is full and so on.
+ It needs a fair bit of work to turn into a usable data
+ structure, though, which is what `sym' is for.
+
* `dstr.h' provides a dynamically sized string type. In the
rather paltry tests I've run, it seemed faster than
libstdc++'s string type, but I shouldn't read too much into
string looks sane before you start expecting any of the
functions or macros to work.
- * `dynarray.h' is a big nasty macro which defines functions
- capable of dealing with dynamically-sized arrays of
- arbitrary types. (You build a new set of functions for each
- type. Think of it as a hacky C++ template-a-like.) The
- arrays are sparse, but not ever-so efficient in terms of
- look-up time.
+ * `darray.h' implements dynamically growing arrays which can be
+ extended at both ends, a bit like Perl's. It replaces the
+ old `dynarray.h' which wasn't very good. However, `darray's
+ arrays are not sparse. Maybe a good sparse array module
+ will be added later.
At the same conceptual level, there's some code for handling
multiplexed I/O. Although the core is named `sel', and it uses
connect, and adds itself to the select system. When the
connect completes, you get given the file descriptor.
+ * `ident.h' is an RFC931 (identd) client.
+
+ * `bres.h' is a background name resolver. It keeps a pool of
+ resolver processes to answer queries.
+
+ * `sig.h' traps signals and dispatches them through the
+ event-driven `sel' system.
+
Then there's a bunch of other stuff.
+ * `base64.h' does Base64 encoding and decoding.
+
+ * `bits.h' provides some portable bit manipulation macros.
+
* `crc32.h' declares the 32-bit CRC used by `sym'.
+ * `env.h' provides some routines for handling environment
+ variables in a hashtable.
+
+ * `fdflags.h' encapsulates some traditional little dances with
+ fcntl when playing with nonblocking files.
+
+ * `lock.h' does fcntl-style locking with a timeout.
+
* `quis.h' works out the program name from the value of
`argv[0]' and puts it in a variable for everything else to
find.
* `report.h' reports fatal and nonfatal errors in the standard
Unixy way.
+ * `str.h' provides some occasionally useful string-
+ manipulation toys.
+
* `trace.h' provides a simple tracing facility, which can be
turned on and off both at compile- and run-time.
results. It's particularly handy with cryptographic
algorithms, I find.
-
-Future directions
-
- I'm going to write some manual pages. Promise.
+ * `url.h' does url-encoding, which armours mostly-textual
+ name/value pairs so they contain no whitespace characters.
Mark Wooding
mdw@nsict.org
+\f
+Local variables:
+mode: text
+End:
~mdw / mLib / blobdiff