GLib Reference Manual

for GLib 2.20.3 The latest version of this documentation can be found on-line at http://library.gnome.org/devel/glib/unstable/.

GLib Overview

Compiling the GLib package — How to compile GLib itself
Cross-compiling the GLib package — How to cross-compile GLib
Compiling GLib Applications — How to compile your GLib application
Running GLib Applications — How to run and debug your GLib application
Changes to GLib — Incompatible changes made between successing versions of GLib
Regular expression syntax — Syntax and semantics of the regular expressions supported by GRegex
Mailing lists and bug reports — Getting help with GLib

GLib Fundamentals

Version Information — Variables and functions to check the GLib version
Basic Types — standard GLib types, defined for ease-of-use and portability
Limits of Basic Types — portable method of determining the limits of the standard types
Standard Macros — commonly-used macros.
Type Conversion Macros — portably storing integers in pointer variables
Byte Order Macros — a portable way to convert between different byte orders
Numerical Definitions — mathematical constants, and floating point decomposition
Miscellaneous Macros — specialized macros which are not used often
Atomic Operations — basic atomic integer and pointer operations

GLib Core Application Support

The Main Event Loop — manages all available sources of events
Threads — thread abstraction; including threads, different mutexes, conditions and thread private data
Thread Pools — pools of threads to execute work concurrently
Asynchronous Queues — asynchronous communication between threads
Dynamic Loading of Modules — portable method for dynamically loading 'plug-ins'
Memory Allocation — general memory-handling
IO Channels — portable support for using files, pipes and sockets
Error Reporting — a system for reporting errors
Message Output and Debugging Functions — functions to output messages and help debug applications
Message Logging — versatile support for logging messages with different levels of importance

GLib Utilities

String Utility Functions — various string-related functions
Character Set Conversion — convert strings between different character sets using iconv()
Unicode Manipulation — functions operating on Unicode characters and UTF-8 strings
Base64 Encoding — encodes and decodes data in Base64 format
Data Checksums — Computes the checksum for data
Internationalization — gettext support macros
Date and Time Functions — calendrical calculations and miscellaneous time stuff
Random Numbers — pseudo-random number generator
Hook Functions — support for manipulating lists of hook functions
Miscellaneous Utility Functions — a selection of portable utility functions
Lexical Scanner — a general purpose lexical scanner
Automatic String Completion — support for automatic completion using a group of target strings
Timers — keep track of elapsed time
Spawning Processes — process launching
File Utilities — various file-related functions
URI Functions — URI Functions
Shell-related Utilities — shell-like commandline handling
Commandline option parser — parses commandline options
Glob-style pattern matching — matches strings against patterns containing '*' (wildcard) and '?' (joker)
Perl-compatible regular expressions — matches strings against regular expressions
Simple XML Subset Parser — parses a subset of XML
Key-value file parser — parses .ini-like config files
Bookmark file parser — parses files containing bookmarks
Testing — a test framework
Windows Compatibility Functions — UNIX emulation on Windows

GLib Data Types

Memory Slices — efficient way to allocate groups of equal-sized chunks of memory
Memory Chunks — deprecated way to allocate groups of equal-sized chunks of memory
Doubly-Linked Lists — linked lists containing integer values or pointers to data, with the ability to iterate over the list in both directions
Singly-Linked Lists — linked lists containing integer values or pointers to data, limited to iterating over the list in one direction
Double-ended Queues — double-ended queue data structure
Sequences — scalable lists
Trash Stacks — maintain a stack of unused allocated memory chunks
Hash Tables — associations between keys and values so that given a key the value can be found quickly
Strings — text buffers which grow automatically as text is added
String Chunks — efficient storage of groups of strings
Arrays — arrays of arbitrary elements which grow automatically as elements are added
Pointer Arrays — arrays of pointers to any type of data, which grow automatically as new elements are added
Byte Arrays — arrays of bytes, which grow automatically as elements are added
Balanced Binary Trees — a sorted collection of key/value pairs optimized for searching and traversing in order
N-ary Trees — trees of data with any number of branches
Quarks — a 2-way association between a string and a unique integer identifier
Keyed Data Lists — lists of data elements which are accessible by a string or GQuark identifier
Datasets — associate groups of data elements with particular memory locations
Relations and Tuples — tables of data which can be indexed on any number of fields
Caches — caches allow sharing of complex data structures to save resources
Memory Allocators — deprecated way to allocate chunks of memory for GList, GSList and GNode

GLib Tools

glib-gettextize — gettext internationalization utility
gtester — test running utility
gtester-report — test report formatting utility

Index

Index of deprecated symbols

Index of new symbols in 2.2

Index of new symbols in 2.4

Index of new symbols in 2.6

Index of new symbols in 2.8

Index of new symbols in 2.10

Index of new symbols in 2.12

Index of new symbols in 2.14

Index of new symbols in 2.16

Index of new symbols in 2.18

Index of new symbols in 2.20