C Algorithm Library

C algorithms is, as the name implies, a collection of common data structures and algorithms implemented as a header-only library in C99.

Motivation

Every now and then I find myself preparing for technical interviews which often require at least some basic understanding of common data structures and algorithms. These questions are supposed to assess a candidates' technical background and ability to think on her feet. In real life, however, you should definitely avoid re-inventing the wheel and use well-established, peer reviewed libraries, like Boost for C++.

Why Header-Only?

There are trade-offs between shipping a library in a header-only format and using separate files for the API and implementation. The header-only approach, though not very efficient when building large projects, has one big advantage; the library does not need to be separately compiled and you only have to #include the relevant header file in your source code:

heapsort.c

#include "Heapsort.h"

int A[] = {4, 5, 1, 8, 5};

int main(void) {
  ssize_t size = sizeof(A) / sizeof(A[0]);

  HeapSort(A, size);  // Boom!

  return 0;
}

Compile with:

gcc heapsort.c -I${C_ALGO_DIR} -o heapsort

Testing

I have used the GoogleTest (gtest) framework. This has bloated the repository a lot and might be an overkill for this small project but I wanted to give it a try nevertheless. In order to run the tests simply execute make test

Scope

This is an educational and experimental piece of code. Needless to say, never use a random toy algorithm implementation like this in any production setting.

Author

@lekkas