GLib
GLib is a cross-platform software utility library. It started life as part of the GTK+ project, but is now used by other applications. While it was originally a convenient library to collect low-level code in, it has since expanded into offering wrapper functions for functionality that is typically different across platforms. GLib is now the cross-platform component that makes applications portable across different operating systems.
Some features of GLib include:
- basic types and their limits
- standard macros
- type conversions
- byte order
- memory allocation
- warnings and assertions
- message logging
- timers
- string utilities
- hook functions
- a lexical scanner
- dynamic loading of modules
- threads
- memory pools
- automatic string completion.
- a type system, GType
- an object system, GObject
A number of data structures (and their related operations) are also defined, including:
- memory chunks
- doubly- and singly-linked lists
- hash tables (associative arrays)
- strings (which can grow dynamically)
- string chunks (groups of strings)
- arrays (which can grow in size as elements are added)
- balanced binary trees
- N-ary trees
- quarks (a two-way association of a string and a unique integer identifier)
- keyed data lists (lists of data elements accessible by a string or integer id)
- relations and tuples (tables of data which can be indexed on any number of fields)
- caches.
