Sun, 30 Jul 2006

A C++ Wrapper for libsndfile.

Over the years I've received a bunch emails saying stuff like "why did you write libsndfile in that old fashioned C language instead of nice modern shiny C++?". Obviously anyone who even thinks something like this is too ignorant of C to be a good C++ programmer. A competent C++ programmer needs to know and be comfortable with the whole of the C language as well as the whole of C++.

At the time I started work on libsndfile in 1998 I was writing far more C++ code than C code. However, back then, the GNU C++ compiler was nowhere near as good as it is today and I thought a C library interface was a safer bet than C++. In retrospect, I believe the decision of using C was spot on, for the following reasons:

However, some people do prefer C++ to C and many of those would probably be writing their own C++ wrapper. Since the vast majority of these wrappers would largely the same, it makes sense for me to distribute a C++ wrapper with libsndfile.

I decided on the following set of criteria for the wrapper:

It does however use templates for the read/write/readf/writef methods: 

  template <typename T> sf_count_t read   (T *ptr, sf_count_t items) ;
  template <typename T> sf_count_t readf  (T *ptr, sf_count_t frames) ;
  template <typename T> sf_count_t write  (const T *ptr, sf_count_t items) ;
  template <typename T> sf_count_t writef (const T *ptr, sf_count_t frames) ;

with explicit specializations for types short, int, float and double.

It also explicitly makes the copy constructor and assignment operator private. The problem with these two is that two objects wrapping the same SNDFILE* pointer will not give the expected behavior. With the C version: 

  SNDFILE *file1 = sf_open (filename, ...);
  SNDFILE *file2 = file1 ;

anyone reading the code can see that file1 and file2 are two pointers pointing to the same object. The code reader knows what behavior to expect here.

Now contrast this with the C++ version: 

  Sndfile file1 (filename, ...) ;
  Sndfile file2 (file1) ;

The objects file1 and file2 look like two independent objects and should behave like two independent objects, but instead they behave like they do in the C version above. I believe that this is inconsistent.

The only solution that would maintain consistency would be to make the copy constructor do a deep copy but that is simply too much of a pain in the neck to implement.

The current version of the wrapper is available here or in verision 1.0.17 or later of libsndfile.

Posted at: 18:26 | Category: CodeHacking/libsndfile | Permalink