Adding Reflection to C (davidpriver.com)

15 points by telotortium 1mo ago ↗ HN

5 comments

[ 1.8 ms ] story [ 22.7 ms ] thread

tliltocatl 1mo ago ↗

Been there… Pendantic nitpick: it's more akin to introspection, reflection would be self-modifying code.

uecker 1mo ago ↗

Here is my proposal with a lot of similarities: https://www.open-std.org/JTC1/SC22/WG14/www/docs/n3212.pdf

cozzyd 1mo ago ↗

BTF or DWARF info in principle contain the information needed, though working with them is cumbersome...

teo_zero 1mo ago ↗

Nice. But you've just invented Zig!

accelbred 1mo ago ↗

C with Zig's comptime is compelling though. Zig doesnt allow you to access all the features your C compiler does, and puts you in the LLVM ecosystem. I've been working on something similar; extending C with both Zig/C++ inspired reflection and linear types, with a compiler that compiles to a subset of C to allow you to leverage GCC and all its extenstions.