I'm just looking for a better way to dynamically allocate an "array" in C. I'm used to C++, Rust and Python where you can just use vectors or lists and would really appreciate some feedback.
I've written a lexer to tokenise a given input (e.g. a text file). Additionally I needed a function to automatically proceed to the next token and collect all the tokens in an array and came up with the following:
Token* Lexer_Run(Lexer* lexer, int* destination_size){ int i = 0, size = 128; Token* destination = (Token*)malloc(size * sizeof(Token)); if (destination == NULL) die("Memory allocation failed!"); Token token = Lexer_Advance(lexer); while (token.type != TOKEN_EOF) { if (i >= size - 1) { size *= 2; destination = (Token*)realloc(destination, size * sizeof(Token)); if (destination == NULL) die("Memory allocation failed!"); } destination[i] = token; i++; token = Lexer_Advance(lexer); } destination = (Token*)realloc(destination, i * sizeof(Token)); if (destination == NULL) die("Memory allocation failed!"); *destination_size = i; return destination;}This works but perhaps there is a better way of accomplishing this? This looks too complex for such a simple task but maybe that's just C... Also I don't like the fact that I essentially have to abuse an argument to the function (destination_size) as a "return value".