libtc implements a portion of libc functionality and more. It provides a portable, well defined, useful, and consistent interface with unit tests.

Several different features which make this library useful.

Different C libraries return different values for malloc(0). tc_malloc(0) will always exhibit the same behaviour regardless of the underlying C library.

getopt() is nice, but getopt_long() is nicer. However getopt_long() isn't available everywhere. Additionally, it doesn't provide a consistent and simple way to process --help/-h and --version/-V.

The args feature of libtc provides command line argument processing and it can provide functions to show help and version information with examples.

        struct tc_prog_arg *arg;

        static struct tc_prog_arg args[] = {
                TC_PROG_ARG_HELP,
                TC_PROG_ARG_VERSION,
                TC_PROG_ARG_END
        };

        static struct tc_prog_example examples[] = {
                { .command = "true", .description = "exit successfully" },
                TC_PROG_EXAMPLE_END
        };

        static struct tc_prog prog = {
                .program = "true",
                .usage = "[OPTIONS]",
                .description = "exits with a success return code",
                .version = TC_VERSION_STRING,
                .copyright = TC_VERSION_COPYRIGHT,
                .license = TC_VERSION_LICENSE,
                .author =  TC_VERSION_AUTHOR,
                .args = args,
                .examples = examples
        };

        while ((arg = tc_args_process(&prog, argc, argv)) != TC_NULL) {
                switch (arg->arg) {
                        case 'h':
                                tc_args_show_help(&prog);
                                break;
                        case 'V':
                                tc_args_show_version(&prog);
                                break;
                }

        }

        argc -= argi;
        argv += argi;

Output of true -h:

true -- exits with a success return code

usage: true [OPTIONS]

  -h, --help	print help text
  -V, --version	print version and copyright info

examples:

  # exit successfully
  true

Output of true -V

true v2022 (Build 0)
Copyright (C) 2022  Thomas Cort
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

Written by Thomas Cort

It's common to set a pointer variable to NULL after the memory it points to is freed to help prevent and detect use after free bugs:

free(obj);
obj = NULL;

The tc_free(void *) function returns NULL to make this pattern a bit more convenient.

obj = tc_free(obj);

Only a few handfuls of system calls are used by libtc and they're all confined to one source file in libtc. Any POSIX.1/C89 compliant system should be able to handle libtc.

Unlike gnulib, libtc doesn't require a complex system of m4 macros to configure it. Use the shared library or just copy and paste the desired code and associated license.

libtc Provides a pkg-config file which makes building software with it simple and painless as many build systems support pkg-config.

A test suite is provided with libtc to help ensure it is working properly on your platform.

The libtc source has copious comments.

• C compiler and standard build tools (make, sh, ...).
• cmake

Installing in your home directory:

cd bin
cmake ..
make
sudo make install

libtc releases once a year on July 1st. The version number corresponds to the year the software collection was released. For example, on July 1, 2038, tcutils v2038 will be released.

None of this software has been designed to conform to any standard. Any resemblance to standards compliant software is purely coincidental.

The author is not open to external contributions at this time. Feel free to report bugs or suggest new features.

SPDX: GPL-3.0-or-later

See the file COPYING for the full license. Each file in the repository should include its own license information.