Review of "Patterns in C" by Adam Tornhill

Twenty one years ago the book Design patterns : elements of reusable object-oriented software changed the way object oriented software was written. Some month back I asked myself if somebody has tried to apply those ideas to plain C. Although C has no object orientation build in, using Abstract Datatypes (ADT) it is possible and also preferable to structure C code in an object oriented manner.

My research lead me to the online book "Patterns in C" by Adam Tornhill, available as PDF or epub from leanpub.com. This book combines a couple of blog posts the author did over the course of years. Not unexpected, the book is introducing ADT in C as prerequisite for the rest of the book.

All the design patterns presented in the book share a second similarity: They all gain their flexibility through the consequent  usage of C function pointers. I admit, I did barely touch them in the past. After having read this book I still believe you should not overuse them but they give you flexibility in your programming you would not expect to find in good old C.

But let's look at the first chapter. It deals with the implementation of a state machine. The author quickly illustrates the classic approaches being simple case statements and a table based approach. He then argues that those classic approaches are not scaling to the big which lets him introduce a C take on the STATE pattern. I personally found that example rather confusing but I would consult it a second time if a state machine is on my C development agenda.

The next chapter deals with the STRATEGY pattern. This is also my favorite chapter of the book. The example given shows how a customer record can be designed leaving certain calculations interchangeable. This is a good example of how modern C can look like and something which is already in my personal tool box.

The following chapter introduces an example implementation of the OBSERVER pattern. The idea is that an object can have one or more subscribers which get informed if the internal state (e.g. measuring data) of the object changes. The subscribers can then decide what to do with this information. It turns the object communication, excuse me, I mean the ADT communication upside down from polling ("Did something change at your side?") to pushing: "Attention, something changed at my side!"

As with the STRATEGY pattern before the main ingredients for the OBSERVER chapter are ADTs and function pointers. The implementation is pleasant to work through and surprisingly straight forward.

The last pattern discussed is the REACTOR pattern. Here, an event is received and dispatched to the appropriate event handler. Although the patterns logic is simple, I had my difficulties to see that logic happening in the code. Maybe reading not only snippets but the whole example would have helped.

The book closes with a couple of C tricks of which I already posted Simulate Keyword Arguments here. This last chapter also shows my general problem with the book: it is too verbose and also trying to be too intellectual. At the end we talk about established programming conventions in the OO world and their adaption in C. This is straight forward software engineering where a Kafka quote feels a bit out of turn.

Concluding, I learned that function pointers are an important tool towards a flexible design. Together with ADTs they make the implementation of established OO design patterns possible also in C. The book itself is not an easy read, though.