Nested structs

Posted By: Smon

Nested structs - 11/30/19 15:06

Background: I'm working on an indicator in R that's so extremely slow I have to implement a cache. My indicator gives back a struct (inner). My cache uses a struct (outer) containing the price boundaries, for which the indicator would return the exact same value (fortunately this is the case!).

I want to use nested structs in order to not have to copy the inner struct one element at a time. I also don't want to have to adapt the outer struct if I make changes to the inner struct.

I think I must use memcpy. The manual tells us:

Quote

memcpy(void* dest, void* src, long size)
Copies size bytes from src to dest. Can be used to copy a whole struct or array with a single function.

Link

This is some demo code:

Code

function main()
{
	typedef struct
	{
		int inside_element;
	} INNER;
	typedef struct
	{
		int outside_element;
		INNER nested;
	} OUTER;
	INNER inner;
	OUTER outer;
	inner.inside_element = 42; //prepare the element to get nested
	outer.outside_element = 13; //some element in the outer struct
	outer.nested = inner; //try to store the inner struct into the outer struct
	//Error in 'line 21: 
	//Syntax error: Wrong type EQU:STRUCT@16::STRUCT@16
	//memcpy(outer.nested, inner, sizeof(inner)); //tried something. Not working when declaring inner and outer as pointers either
	INNER test = outer.nested; //read back the nested struct
	printf("\nnested element: %d; other element: %d", test.inside_element, outer.outside_element);
}

I'm curious about the solution! I hope somebody can help.

Posted By: txesmi

Re: Nested structs - 11/30/19 17:09

Hi,
'memcpy' espects memory addresses. You need to use the reference operator (&) in order to get a struct address.

Code

memcpy(&outer.nested, &inner, sizeof(INNER));

Anyway, you can't assign structs directly

Code

outer.nested = inner; // error
...
INNER test = outer.nested; // error

Depending on how you do receive the INNER struct, you can perform two actions: memcpy, as explained, or save the reference of the incoming struct. Something like this:

Code

typedef struct
{
	int inside_element;
} INNER;
typedef struct
{
	int outside_element;
	INNER * nested; // a pointer to a INNER struct
} OUTER;
...
outer.nested = &inner; //reference!
...

printf("\nnested element: %d; other element: %d", outer.nested->inside_element, outer.outside_element);
// or
INNER * test = outer.nested;
printf("\nnested element: %d; other element: %d", test->inside_element, outer.outside_element);

Hope it helps.
Salud!

Posted By: Smon

Re: Nested structs - 11/30/19 18:24

Thank you very much!