Is it possible to "embed" a structure of variable type into another structure? (GCC)

Question

Is it possible to embed a structure of varying type inside another structure in C?

Basically I want to do something like this.

struct A { int n; void *config; }

struct AConfig { int a; char *b; }
struct BConfig { int a; float b; }

const struct A table[] = {
    { 103, (void*)(struct AConfig){ 1932, "hello" } },
    { 438, (void*)(struct BConfig){ 14829, 33.4f } }
}

Is this possible in C or do I have to define the structures separately?

Answer 1

No, it doesn't work like that. You need explicit storage for each structure:

struct A { int n; void *config; };

struct AConfig { int a; char *b; };
struct BConfig { int a; float b; };

struct AConfig ac = { 1932, "hello" };
struct BConfig bc = { 14829, 33.4f };

const struct A table[] = {
    { 103, &ac },
    { 438, &bc }
};

Edit:

Another possibility is to utilize a union and C99 (-std=c99) named initializers:

enum config_type { CT_INT, CT_FLOAT, CT_STRING };

union config_value {
    int int_value;
    float float_value;
    const char* string_value;
};

struct config {
    enum config_type ctype;
    union config_value cvalue;
};

struct config sys_config[] = {
    { CT_INT, { .int_value = 12 }}, 
    { CT_FLOAT, { .float_value = 3.14f }}, 
    { CT_STRING, { .string_value = "humppa" }}};

void print_config( const struct config* cfg ) {
    switch ( cfg->ctype ) {
        case CT_INT: 
            printf( "%d\n", cfg->cvalue.int_value ); break;      
        case CT_FLOAT:
            printf( "%f\n", cfg->cvalue.float_value ); break;
        case CT_STRING:
            printf( "%s\n", cfg->cvalue.string_value ); break;
        default:
            printf( "unknown config type\n" );
    }       
}