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C-Function-Pointers

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8 views9 pages

C-Function-Pointers

Uploaded by

Soham
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Function Pointers in C

Computing Lab
https://www.isical.ac.in/~dfslab

Indian Statistical Institute

Computing Lab (ISI) Function Pointers in C 1/9


Function pointers

Declaring function pointers


<return type> (* <function name>) ( <parameter list> )

These brackets are important!


Example:
int *aFunction(int), *(*aFunctionPointer)(int);

Using function pointers


(*f)(...)

Setting function pointer variables / passing function pointers as


arguments: simply use the name of the function
Example:
aFunctionPointer = aFunction;

Computing Lab (ISI) Function Pointers in C 2/9


Generic sort/search routines

#include <stdlib.h>

Sorting
void qsort(void *base, size_t nmemb, size_t size,
int (*compar)(const void *, const void *));

Searching
void *bsearch(const void *key, const void *base,
size_t nmemb, size_t size,
int (*compar)(const void *, const void *));

Computing Lab (ISI) Function Pointers in C 3/9


Comparator routine: examples

int compare_int (void *elem1, void *elem2)


{
int *ip1 = elem1;
int *ip2 = elem2;
return *ip1 - *ip2;
/* Or more explicitly:
int i1 = *((int *) elem1);
int i2 = *((int *) elem2);
return i1 - i2;
*/
}

int compare_strings (void *elem1, void *elem2)


{
char **s1 = elem1; // Alt.: char *s1 = *((char **) elem1);
char **s2 = elem2; // Alt.: char *s2 = *((char **) elem2);
return strcmp (*s1, *s2); // Alt.: return strcmp(s1, s2);
}

Computing Lab (ISI) Function Pointers in C 4/9


Using qsort and bsearch

char **strings;
int *a;
int num_strings, N;

qsort(a, N, sizeof(int), compare_int);


qsort(strings, num_strings, sizeof(char *), compare_strings);

Computing Lab (ISI) Function Pointers in C 5/9


Programming problems – I

1. Download bubble-sort.c and student-data.txt (and common.h,


if necessary). Save all 3 files in one directory. Compile and run the
program.
Modify the program so that it uses the qsort function to sort the
student data in alphabetical order by name, or by aggregate
percentage, or by attendance, depending on the user’s choice.
2. Write a program to compute a function of the form
(N −1 )
∑
σ w i · xi + b .
i=0

where σ : R → R is one of the following:


1
(sigmoid ) σ(x) = 1+e−x
ex −e−x
(tanh) σ(x) = ex +e−x

Computing Lab (ISI) Function Pointers in C 6/9


Programming problems – II
{
x if x ≥ 0
(LRELU ) σ(x) =
x/100 if x < 0
Your program should all input values from a file named params.txt,
which should have the following format:
it should have four lines;
the first line will contain a single integer N which can be stored in a
variable of type int;
the second and third lines will each contain N floating point numbers
corresponding to w0 , w1 , . . . , wN −1 and x0 , x1 , . . . , xN −1 , resp.;
the fourth line will contain one of the three strings sigmoid, tanh or
LRELU, specifying the form of σ . Note that the string may be in upper,
lower or mixed case; thus, SIGMOID, lReLU are also valid inputs.

Computing Lab (ISI) Function Pointers in C 7/9


Programming problems – III

3. Many programming languages provide a map() function that works as


follows. Given two sets X, Y and a function f : X → Y , map() takes
as input a list L = [l0 , l1 , . . . , lN −1 ] of elements from X , and returns
f (L) ≜ [f (l0 ), f (l1 ), . . . , f (lN −1 )], a list of elements from Y .
Implement a map function in C. The function should have the following
prototype:
void *map(void *L, unsigned int N,
size_t domain_elt_size, size_t range_elt_size,
void (*f)(void *input, void *output))

where
L is the input list;
N is the number of elements in L;
domain_elt_size (and range_elt_size, resp.) correspond to the size of each
element of the domain and range of f : X → Y ; and

Computing Lab (ISI) Function Pointers in C 8/9


Programming problems – IV

f is a pointer to a C function that implements f (input is a pointer to an element of the


domain X , and output is a pointer to an existing chunk of memory that is just big
enough to store an element of the co-domain Y ).

Computing Lab (ISI) Function Pointers in C 9/9

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