c - access element of struct passed into a void* pointer

Question

I'm working with a binary search tree data structure to sort a series of structs with the type definitions:

typedef struct {
    char c;
    int index;
} data_t;

typedef struct node node_t;

typedef node {
    void *data;
    node_t *left;
    node_t *right;
}

The node_t typedef is from a library provided to me for this purpose, presumably with a void* pointer to ensure polymorphism. node will be passed into the function:

static void *recursive_search_tree(node_t *root, void *key, int cmp(void*,void*))

Within the recursive_search_tree function, I want to be able to modify the code to use the index element as a condition to find the match closest to the index of the linear pass over an array of characters, which would ultimately involve a data_t being passed into *key and key->index being accessed within the function.

The Question

Is it possible to access key->index where key is a void* pointing to a data_t struct, or would this only be possible if data_t was declared as the type for key? I have tried to do the latter, however even casting the pointer to an int doesn't seem to pass the compiler.

Answer 1

Sure it's possible, you'd cast key as type *data_t. (As long as that's really what key points to!)

key                     /* argument of type void* */
(data_t*)key            /* cast as type data_t*   */
((data_t*)key)->index   /* dereferenced */

Here is a simple example:

#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdio.h>

typedef struct {
    char    c;
    int     index;
} data_t;

typedef struct node {
    void    *data;
    struct node *left;
    struct node *right;
} node_t;

static int cmp(void *lhs, void *rhs)
{
    return ((data_t *)lhs)->index - ((data_t *)rhs)->index;
}

int main(void)
{
    data_t d0;
    data_t d1;

    d0.c     = 'A';
    d0.index = 1;
    d1.c     = 'B';
    d1.index = 2;

    printf("d0 < d1? %s
", (cmp((void *)&d0, (void *)&d1) < 0 ? "yes" : "no"));
    printf("d1 < d0? %s
", (cmp((void *)&d1, (void *)&d0) < 0 ? "yes" : "no"));

    return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}