Hacker News with Generative AI: C Programming

C has its limits. If you know where to look (subethasoftware.com)
Thank you, Bing Copilot (ChatGPT), for giving me another “thing I just learned” to blog about.

C Programming, Software Development, Programming Languages

10 points by aquastorm 12 days ago | 2 comments

Show HN: Bptree – A B+ tree implementation in C (github.com/habedi)
Bptree is a lightweight single-header B+ tree implementation written in C.

Data Structures, C Programming, Open Source, Software, GitHub

3 points by habedi0 12 days ago | 0 comments

Embedding Awk in a C Program (neacsu.net)
This article introduces an embedded AWK interpreter that can be called from a C/C++ program.

C Programming, Awk, Programming Languages, Software Development

13 points by shakna 13 days ago | 1 comments

A port of Mbed-TLS for the Classic Macintosh OS 7/8/9 (github.com/bbenchoff)
This is a C89/C90 port of MbedTLS for Mac System 7/8/9. It works, and compiles under Metrowerks Codewarrior Pro 4. Here's the proof:

Macintosh OS, C Programming, Security, Open Source, Legacy Software

86 points by DanAtC 15 days ago | 14 comments

Algorithms Design (In C) (ime.usp.br)
The 20th century was the century of the equation; the 21st century is the century of the algorithm.

Algorithms, Programming, C Programming, Computer Science

8 points by ibobev 26 days ago | 0 comments

A diagram of C23 basic types (wordpress.com)
This week on the C committee mailing list we had a discussion about how C’s types are organized into different categories. At the end I came up with a diagram with that organization. It basically translates the section “6.2.5 Types” of the C23 standard into a graph of inclusions.

C Programming, Programming Languages, Data Structures, Diagrams, Standards

6 points by ingve 28 days ago | 0 comments

A decompilation and port of Sonic Advance 2-a GameBoy Advance game written in C (github.com/SAT-R)
⚠️ This project is not completed and still under active development

Game Development, Programming, Video Games, Retro Gaming, C Programming

182 points by bane 29 days ago | 39 comments

Beej's Guide to C Programming [pdf] (beej.us)

Programming, C Programming, Books

113 points by krykp 32 days ago | 18 comments

Writing Programs with Ncurses (invisible-island.net)
This document is an introduction to programming with curses. It is not an exhaustive reference for the curses Application Programming Interface (API); that role is filled by the curses manual pages. Rather, it is intended to help C programmers ease into using the package.

Programming, C Programming, Libraries

128 points by begoon 34 days ago | 52 comments

Bootstrap C projects without the pain (github.com/claeusdev)
A minimal C project generator written in Rust.

C Programming, Rust, Project Generators, Developer Tools

13 points by claeusdev 35 days ago | 0 comments

Strncpy? just say no (2011) (liw.fi)
This is a rant. I’ve made it in various forms in various places over the years, and I think it’s time to put it somewhere so I can point people at it, and stop repeating myself.

Programming, Security, C Programming

3 points by Tomte 42 days ago | 0 comments

Writing a Simple Garbage Collector in C (maplant.com)
People seem to think that writing a garbage collector is really hard, a deep magic understood by a few great sages and Hans Boehm (et al). Well it’s not. In fact, it’s rather straight forward. I claim that the hardest part in writing a GC is writing the memory allocator, which is as hard to write as it is to look up the malloc example in K&R.

Programming, C Programming, Garbage Collection

3 points by stevenmh 43 days ago | 0 comments

Image Processing in C (2000) [pdf] (ed.ac.uk)

Image Processing, C Programming, Computer Science, Technical Documents, 1990s

139 points by nill0 43 days ago | 26 comments

Show HN: Krep a High-Performance String Search Utility Written in C (davidesantangelo.github.io)
A blazingly fast string search utility for performance-critical applications

Software, C Programming, String Search, Performance Optimization

173 points by daviducolo 46 days ago | 74 comments

Reinforcement Learning in less than 400 lines of C (github.com/antirez)
This code implements a neural network that learns to play tic-tac-toe using reinforcement learning, just playing against a random adversary, in under 400 lines of C code, without any external library used.

Reinforcement Learning, Programming, C Programming, Tic-Tac-Toe

10 points by antirez 47 days ago | 4 comments

Vulkan Game Engine Series Written in C – Travis Vroman (youtube.com)

Vulkan, Game Engines, Programming, C Programming, YouTube

21 points by nill0 52 days ago | 1 comments

Robust Wavefront OBJ model parsing in C (nullprogram.com)
Wavefront OBJ is a line-oriented, text format for 3D geometry. It’s widely supported by modeling software, easy to parse, and trivial to emit, much like Netpbm for 2D image data. Poke around hobby 3D graphics projects and you’re likely to find a bespoke OBJ parser. While typically only loading their own model data, so robustness doesn’t much matter, they usually have hard limitations and don’t stand up to fuzz testing.

3D Graphics, Software Development, Programming, C Programming, Parsing

93 points by ingve 54 days ago | 66 comments

Cursed fire or #define black magic (ssloy.github.io)
Have you ever wondered whether it is possible to write fully functional code using only the #define directive in C?

C Programming, Programming Languages, Code Optimization, Computer Science, Hacks

34 points by davikr 65 days ago | 5 comments

Examples of quick hash tables and dynamic arrays in C (nullprogram.com)
This article durably captures my reddit comment showing techniques for std::unordered_map and std::vector equivalents in C programs. The core, important features of these data structures require only a dozen or so lines of code apiece. They compile quickly, and tend to run faster in debug builds than release builds of their C++ equivalents. What they lack in genericity they compensate in simplicity. Nothing here will be new. Everything has been covered in greater detail previously, which I will reference when appropriate.

Data Structures, C Programming, Performance, Optimization

26 points by signa11 94 days ago | 10 comments

Examples of quick hash tables and dynamic arrays in C (nullprogram.com)
This article durably captures my reddit comment showing techniques for std::unordered_map and std::vector equivalents in C programs. The core, important features of these data structures require only a dozen or so lines of code apiece. They compile quickly, and tend to run faster in debug builds than release builds of their C++ equivalents. What they lack in genericity they compensate in simplicity. Nothing here will be new. Everything has been covered in greater detail previously, which I will reference when appropriate.

C Programming, Data Structures, Performance, Optimization

29 points by grep_it 97 days ago | 9 comments

The 'Obfuscated C Code' Competition returns (thenewstack.io)

Programming, Competitions, C Programming, Security

6 points by MilnerRoute 104 days ago | 1 comments

Getting silly with C, part (void*)2 (lcamtuf.substack.com)
In the previous installment of our introductory series about the C language, we introduced the syntax of the switch() statement (demo link):

C Programming, Programming Tutorials, Code Examples

175 points by justmarc 106 days ago | 115 comments

"Why learning the C language is still a good idea" by Antirez (youtube.com)

C Programming, Programming Languages, Software Development

30 points by tolarianwiz 106 days ago | 1 comments

C "clockwise/spiral" rule to understand declarations (c-faq.com)
There is a technique known as the ``Clockwise/Spiral Rule'' which enables any C programmer to parse in their head any C declaration!

C Programming, Syntax, Parsing

39 points by galkk 115 days ago | 75 comments

Zero to Prod in C – Creating Server and Hosting (brightprogrammer.in)
I recently started looking into self-hosting, and after spending two almost sleepless nights, I finally have a solution to self host any service and link it to an endpoint with your domain name.

Self-Hosting, Web Development, C Programming, Tutorials

12 points by cozis 121 days ago | 1 comments

Fixing C Strings (thasso.xyz)
It’s well-known that null-terminated C strings are bug-prone and unsafe to use. They’re the stereotypical footgun. I’ve been tinkering in a bare-metal environment recently, writing all code myself, including the common types and routines you find in libc or similar. In all the code I wrote, there is not at single null-terminated string, and I have yet to encounter a bug related to bounds checking on strings or buffers.

C Programming, Programming Languages, Security, Software Development, Low-Level Programming

24 points by ingve 130 days ago | 1 comments

In C some things aren't what they seem – The Craft of Coding (wordpress.com)
In C it is possible to make up things that don’t exist. For example this can lead to operators being created when they don’t exist, at least in the eyes of the programmer. Take the “–>” operator. This operator doesn’t exist, but can function as if it does. Here is an example program:

Programming, C Programming, Software Development, Code

4 points by rbanffy 131 days ago | 0 comments

In C some things aren't what they seem (wordpress.com)
In C it is possible to make up things that don’t exist. For example this can lead to operators being created when they don’t exist, at least in the eyes of the programmer.

C Programming, Software Development, Programming Languages

4 points by rbanffy 131 days ago | 0 comments

Using Libc for GPUs (llvm.org)
Once you have finished building the GPU C library it can be used to run libc or libm functions directly on the GPU. Currently, not all C standard functions are supported on the GPU. Consult the list of supported functions for a comprehensive list.