rcpointer

This implements a reference-counted shared pointer for C using glib types.

Wraps a C pointer in a struct with reference counting. Requires a destructor function for the pointer’s object.

Glib types are used for convenience.

See the example C files for usage.

This was inspired by a need to share an allocated object among multiple instances of a struct, each of which have different lifetimes.

Functions

Allocate a new rcpointer that owns the raw pointer.

rcpointer* rcp_new( gpointer obj, pointer destructor );

Delete the rcpointer, and destroy the raw object if reference count is zero.

rcpointer* rcp_delete( rcpointer* ptr );

Copy the rcpointer.

rcpointer* rcp_copy( rcpointer* const ptr );

Get the raw pointer to the object owned by the rcpointer.

gpointer rcp_get( rcpointer* const ptr );

Examples

The header comment in each example file gives the compilation command for gcc, and the command for running the example using valgrind to show that no memory issues occur.

example_rcpointer.c

Simple usage of rcpointer. Displays how a single raw pointer is contained in multiple rcpointer objects.

example_rcpointer_DocView.c

Example of model-view-controller pattern using rcpointer. Relationship of model:view is 1:many, so the model object pointer is shared. Here, the model is a document, and the view is an unspecified widget that, if implemented, will display a view of the document’s contents.