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I am working on a project where I have to implement a handler for several functions, all of which have a number associated with them. The number that they are associated with is how the different functions are called. Knowing this I want to be able to group them into an array using the number as the index to the functions. The problem is, arrays need to have the same type of elements inside of them right? so how can I place these functions into an array?

Here is how the functions are numbered:

enum 
  {
    SYS_HALT,                   /* Halt the operating system. */
    SYS_EXIT,                   /* Terminate this process. */
    SYS_EXEC,                   /* Start another process. */
    SYS_WAIT,                   /* Wait for a child process to die. */
    SYS_CREATE,                 /* Create a file. */
    SYS_REMOVE,                 /* Delete a file. */
    SYS_OPEN,                   /* Open a file. */
    SYS_FILESIZE,               /* Obtain a file's size. */
    SYS_READ,                   /* Read from a file. */
    SYS_WRITE,                  /* Write to a file. */
    SYS_SEEK,                   /* Change position in a file. */
    SYS_TELL,                   /* Report current position in a file. */
    SYS_CLOSE,                  /* Close a file. */
  };

And here is the list of function prototypes:

void halt (void) NO_RETURN;
void exit (int status) NO_RETURN;
pid_t exec (const char *file);
int wait (pid_t);
bool create (const char *file, unsigned initial_size);
bool remove (const char *file);
int open (const char *file);
int filesize (int fd);
int read (int fd, void *buffer, unsigned length);
int write (int fd, const void *buffer, unsigned length);
void seek (int fd, unsigned position);
unsigned tell (int fd);
void close (int fd);

Main question

Is there an easy way to put all of the functions into an array or other data structure in C?

Any help would be most appreciated, this is for a school project, so a small example or link would be very useful, but I'd like to create the solution myself.

Thanks

Edit: What I'd like to be able to do

I want to be able to define some array and store a pointer to the functions at the indexes of the enum ordinal numbers.

//I don't know how to handle the type here
<some_type> system_call_arr[128];

system_call_arr[SYS_HALT] = halt;
system_call_arr[SYS_EXIT] = exit;
system_call_arr[SYS_EXEC] = exec;

// and so on....

Edit 2

Since Ben said all of the arguments would fit into a 32 bit argument, couldn't I define something like this:

typedef int (*sys_func) (uint32_t, uint32_t, uint32_t);
sys_func syscall_array[128];

syscall_array[SYS_HALT] = (sys_func)halt;
//etc....

Is something like this good practice?

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2
  • Can you give an example of how you'd like to call them? Commented Nov 16, 2011 at 4:14
  • use the pointer to the function: int *func(int a); Commented Nov 16, 2011 at 4:15

4 Answers 4

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The classic UNIX way to do this is to give all of those functions the same signature (say int sys_func(struct args *a) and then put those all into a function array. When you marshal arguments for the calls you just put them in as arg1, arg2, etc all in struct args and each syscall uses them differently. Or you can alias a special structure on top of it to give them meaningful names.

In your edit you ask, "Is something like this good practice?" I gave my answer in the context of your question, which appears to be the implementation of a simple operating system kernel. Operating systems get to cheat in ways that normal applications never should. It can use assumptions about word size (e.g. that everything is 32-bit, as in ILP-32) and know things about the ABI because implementing these things is part of the operating system's job. If your OS is portable to other platforms it will compile in different variants of things like syscall to handle these cases.

Why did I suggest struct args rather than your method? Because in an operating system you will have a few layers between the user making the syscall and the actual code running from your function pointer table. If you pass these arguments explicitly through each layer you are going to copy them several times. If the first layer can simply provide a pointer that sort of "jumps" the arguments over the intermediate functions. If you're dealing with an ABI where the calling convention is to push arguments on the stack, you can avoid copying the arguments altogether and just take an appropriate stack address as the args.

You can find discussions of this and pretty much every other aspect of operating system design in The Design and Implementation of the 4.4 BSD Operating System by McKusick et. al. If you can find the older 4.3 version it's actually a fairly slim volume and still entirely relevant to what you're working on.

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2 Comments

but different functions take arguments of different types. so what would the type of arg1, arg2, argx be ?
On a 32-bit system you'd just be relying on all arguments (ints and pointers) to fit in 32-bit arguments. The types in the struct itself don't matter, only what they are cast to by the function.
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On any modern system, you can just create an array of void* to hold the function pointers. But, that's technically undefined behaviour in ANSI C. Instead, you can use a generic function pointer type like void(*)() and cast the pointer to the correct function pointer type when it's called See the C FAQ. But you're going to need a switch statement anyway to do that cast, so as Jesus mentions, you can just call the correct function at the same time and forget the array altogether.

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2

There's really no need unless you're doing something that provides a interface and usually for that you create a struct that has the basic operations that you need to implement and set appropriate pointers. For something like this (if you're not trying to make it generic) just use a switch statement on the enum values. In C most of the time this gets optimized to a jump table because all the enum values are sequential so you don't get a pipeline stall when checking which function to execute based on some request parameter.

In the Linux Kernel for example there are basic operation structs that have predefined function prototypes where all you have to do is implement these functions and export a struct that has the appropriate function pointers set to your implementation and it's plug and play but it seems that doing that would be overkill for what you want.

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3 Comments

Thanks a lot for your comment. I think I am going to go with Ben's struct idea.
But I will still have to use a switch statement to call the functions.
But that's easy enough to keep track of unless you give them all the same prototype in which case you can use a single array to call them simply by indexing using the enum value.
1

If you are willing to eschew type safety, you can create a union type, like so:

union Args {
    size_t st;
    ssize_t sst;
    int i;
    unsigned u;
    pid_t pt;
    mode_t mt;
    char *pc;
    const char* cpc;
    void *pv;
    const void *cpv;
    /* etc */
};

Then, for each function, have them accept union Args * as the list of parameters, and a size_t as the number of parameters (open can accept 3 parameters - it uses va_* to check for them as needed. Have them return a union Args.

Note: for void functions, just have them return 0.

E.g.

union Args my_open(union Args *args, size_t nargs) {
    union Args a;
    switch (nargs) {
    case 2:
        a.i = open(args[0].cpc, args[1].i);
        break;
    case 3:
        a.i = open(args[0].cpc, args[1].i, args[2].mt);
        break;
    default:
         errno = EINVAL;
         a.i = -1;
    }
    return a;
}

Then you can have something along the lines of:

typedef union Args (*My_func)(union Args *, size_t);
My_func *fptrs;
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