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I am confused. Having gone over quite a bit of the authors C code on GitHub, it seems he uses libC quite often. I read/follow his blog posts; most are well writ

I am confused. Having gone over quite a bit of the authors C code on GitHub, it seems he uses libC quite often. I read/follow his blog posts; most are well written and insightful. His code is rather elegant as well, making his code bases good for studying (I recommend them to mentees)… What am I missing here. I think libc is quite alright given its time in operation, I bet libC is the most widely used standard library on the planet by a large margin. If not libC then what? Musl, glib? Those are great as well but I think avoiding libC is somewhat silly..

flohofwoe 4y ago
You use your own or someone else's non-standard wrapper libraries for specific OS services. For instance if you want to do asynchronous IO, or use virtual memory features, the C standard library is entirely useless anyway, so you create your own thin cross-platform wrappers over OS specific system API calls, or even call those OS specific functions directly (e.g. POSIX functions on UNIX-flavoured operating systems or Win32 functions on Windows). The C stdlib is essentially an SDK for very simple 70's UNIX-style command line tools, but operating systems have moved on, while the C standard library is unfortunately stuck in the past. (IMHO a "C stdlib v2" would be much more important than any new language features, but it doesn't look like the C committee wants to go down that road).
woodruffw 4y ago
The post doesn't say he doesn't use libc; it says that he tries to minimize his use of it. It's very difficult to entirely avoid libc. musl and glibc are implementations of libc, not alternatives to it.
- eqvinox 4y ago
  glib != glibc; glib is Gtk/GNOME's OS-independent wrapping layer and in fact an alternative to using libc functions directly. E.g. here is glib's take on strcmp() as entry point: https://docs.gtk.org/glib/func.strcmp0.html https://docs.gtk.org/glib/func.strcmp0.html
  - woodruffw 4y ago
    I know that; I assumed from context ("Musl, glib") that the GP has probably just dropped the "c" by accident, since musl is a libc implementation.
- mgaunard 4y ago
  how is it difficult to avoid libc? All you need are the system calls of your kernel. You don't need libc to call those.
  - woodruffw 4y ago
    Relatively little of libc overlaps with the system call space: there's some I/O and a little bit of stuff that could be done with a system call (like time), but traditionally aren't for both concern separation and performance reasons. As a small example: `strtok` is simultaneously a very useful function and one that's annoying to use correctly (much less independently implement correctly). It isn't a system call.
    - mgaunard 4y ago
      strtok is a trivial and not particularly good function, in part due to its poor API. You can write a better one in minutes (which is incidentally less than the time to understand the corner cases of this function's behaviour)

flohofwoe 4y ago

You use your own or someone else's non-standard wrapper libraries for specific OS services. For instance if you want to do asynchronous IO, or use virtual memory features, the C standard library is entirely useless anyway, so you create your own thin cross-platform wrappers over OS specific system API calls, or even call those OS specific functions directly (e.g. POSIX functions on UNIX-flavoured operating systems or Win32 functions on Windows). The C stdlib is essentially an SDK for very simple 70's UNIX-style command line tools, but operating systems have moved on, while the C standard library is unfortunately stuck in the past. (IMHO a "C stdlib v2" would be much more important than any new language features, but it doesn't look like the C committee wants to go down that road).

woodruffw 4y ago

The post doesn't say he doesn't use libc; it says that he tries to minimize his use of it. It's very difficult to entirely avoid libc. musl and glibc are implementations of libc, not alternatives to it.

eqvinox 4y ago
glib != glibc; glib is Gtk/GNOME's OS-independent wrapping layer and in fact an alternative to using libc functions directly. E.g. here is glib's take on strcmp() as entry point: https://docs.gtk.org/glib/func.strcmp0.html https://docs.gtk.org/glib/func.strcmp0.html
- woodruffw 4y ago
  I know that; I assumed from context ("Musl, glib") that the GP has probably just dropped the "c" by accident, since musl is a libc implementation.
mgaunard 4y ago
how is it difficult to avoid libc? All you need are the system calls of your kernel. You don't need libc to call those.
- woodruffw 4y ago
  Relatively little of libc overlaps with the system call space: there's some I/O and a little bit of stuff that could be done with a system call (like time), but traditionally aren't for both concern separation and performance reasons. As a small example: `strtok` is simultaneously a very useful function and one that's annoying to use correctly (much less independently implement correctly). It isn't a system call.
  - mgaunard 4y ago
    strtok is a trivial and not particularly good function, in part due to its poor API. You can write a better one in minutes (which is incidentally less than the time to understand the corner cases of this function's behaviour)