What's your opinion on adding generic functions (parametric polymorphism) in C?

2 points

5 years ago

I'm working on a research project about C and, at the moment, I'm investigating the possibility of introducing/proposing generic functions (and parametric polymorphism) to the language. I can't yet provide any technicalities, but the idea is to have a design along with C style/look-and-feel — think of it more as an extension to C11's `_Generic', than of C++ templates.

The project motivation is to introduce an alternative to #macros and void*, uniting the benefits of the 2, but without (what I consider) their drawbacks: convoluted code and error proneness (due to text that isn't C grammar) in the former, and lack of type safety in the latter.

To gather the opinion of C programmers in this matter, I'm conducting a survey: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ltcmelo_clanguage-cprogramming-cprogramminglanguage-activity-6781951823088508928-yuqd

If you'd like to participate, I'd be thankful for your opinion. Any discussion in the matter is welcome as well, here and/or in the comments section of the poll.