Anyone wanting to review and provide feedback on my library?

[remod]

Hi there! I've put together a library with useful (at least for me) C
code that I've written over time. So far I have utilities for:

- Debugging
- Logging
- Unit Testing (simple but TAP compatible)
- Error handling
- Finite State Machines
- Variable length strings
- Variable length arrays
- Hash table
- Pattern matching (different and, hopefully,
faster than regular expressions)
- Embeddable lexers (based on the above pattern
matching functions)

and I'm looking for comments, suggestions and feedback on the code.

If anyone wants to have a look, the code is on Google Code:

http://code.google.com/p/c-libutl/source/browse/#svn/trunk

Thanks,
Remo.D

[Malcolm McLean]

"remod" <rden...@gmail.com> wrote in message
> - Variable length strings

> and I'm looking for comments, suggestions and feedback on the code.
>

Let's say for the sake of argument that your variable length string library
is the best anyone has ever designed.
Can I use it? That's a difficult decision. I've got to weigh up the
superiority of the design against the fact that the library has no sort of
user base, and there is just one random person committed (psychologically
but not legally) to maintaining it. Release 2 might break everything.

It is very difficult to produce a useful library for something basic or
fundamental on your own. What you need to do is to get in tough with other
programmers and work as a group. Then the library has far more credibility.
Once ypu've got a decent user base, of course, all these problems drop away
and the superiority of the design can shine through.

In a sense you are already taking my advice by posting here for comments.
However groups like GNU are really the place to go, because they release
libraries all of the time.

[remod]

Malcolm McLean ha scritto:

> Can I use it? That's a difficult decision. [...]

> the library has no sort of user base, and there is just one random

> person committed [...] to maintaining it.

>
> It is very difficult to produce a useful library for something basic or
> fundamental on your own.

First of all, thanks for your reply, Malcom.

I agree with your suggestions 100% and, as you guessed, this is exactly
an attempt to get a third party view on what I've done so far.

I don't know if my design is "superior" or not, I think it's a
reasonable compromise between ease of use, performance, and time I can
devote to work on it. But I must admit I can be biased :)

I appreciate your comment on the user base but I feel there's very
little I can do, except looking to feedback and changing those things
that might make the library more appealing to users.

I suspect the mantainers of GNU libraries are far too busy with their
own stuff to look at something that doesn't conform to their standard.

Well, if you happen to have a look at the code let me know. I think the
examples should give a good sense of what I'm trying to achieve.

Thanks,
Remo.D