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The C3 Guide

C Interoperability

C3 is C ABI compatible. That means you can call C from C3, and call C3 from C without having to do anything special. As a quick way to call C, you can simply declare the function as a C3 function but with extern in front of it. As long as the function is linked, it will work:

extern fn void puts(char*); // C "puts"


fn void main()
{
    // This will call the "puts"
    // function in the standard c lib.
    puts("Hello, world!");
}

To use a different identifier inside of your C3 code compared to the function or variable’s external name, use the @extern attribute:

extern fn void foo_puts(char*) @extern("puts"); // C "puts"


fn void main()
{
    foo_puts("Hello, world!"); // Still calls C "puts"
}

While C3 functions are available from C using their external name, it’s often useful to define an external name using @extern to match C usage.

module foo;
fn int square(int x)
{
    return x * x;
}


fn int square2(int x) @extern("square")
{
    return x * x;
}

Calling from C:

extern int square(int);
int foo_square(int) __attribute__ ((weak, alias ("foo.square")));


void test()
{
    // This would call square2
    printf("%d\n", square(11));


    // This would call square
    printf("%d\n", foo_square(11));
}

Linking static and dynamic libraries

If you have a library foo.a or foo.so or foo.obj (depending on type and OS), just add -l foo on the command line, or in the project file add it to the linked-libraries value, e.g. "linked-libraries" = ["foo"].

To add library search paths, use -L <directory> from the command line and linker-search-paths the project file (e.g. "linker-search-paths" = ["../mylibs/", "/extra-libs/"])

Gotchas

  • Bitstructs will be seen as its backing type, when used from C.
  • C bit fields must be manually converted to a C3 bitstruct with the correct layout for each target platform.
  • C assumes the enum size is CInt
  • C3 uses fixed integer sizes, this means that int and CInt does not need to be the same though in practice on 32/64 bit machines, long is usually the only type that differs in size between C and C3.
  • Atomic types are not supported by C3.
    • In C3 there are generic Atomic types instead.
  • There are no volatile and const qualifiers like in C.
    • C3 has global constants declared with const.
    • Instead of the volatile type qualifier, there are standard library macros @volatile_load and @volatile_store.
  • Passing arrays by value like in C3 must be represented as passing a struct containing the array.
  • In C3, fixed arrays do not decay into pointers like in C.
    • When defining a C function that has an array argument, replace the array type with a pointer. E.g. void test(int[] a) should become extern fn void test(int* a). If the function has a sized array, like void test2(int[4] b) replace it with a pointer to a sized array: extern fn void test2(int[4]* b);
    • Note that a pointer to an array is always implicitly convertable to a pointer to the first element For example, int[4]* may be implicitly converted to int*.