Passing capturing C++ lambda functions as function pointers

Suppose we have a function accepting a C-style callback function like this:

void do_something(void (*callback)())
{
  ...
  callback();
}

As captureless C++ lambda functions can be cast to regular function pointers, the following works as expected:

auto callback=[](){std::cout<<"callback called\n";};
do_something(callback);

output: callback called

Unfortunately , if our callback code captures some variable from the context, we are out of luck

int num_callbacks=0;
···
auto callback=[&](){
  std::cout<<"callback called "<<++num_callbacks<<" times \n";
};
do_something(callback);

error: cannot convert 'main()::<lambda>' to 'void (*)()'

because capturing lambda functions create a closure of the used context that needs to be carried around to the point of invocation. If we are allowed to modify do_something we can easily circumvent the problem by accepting a more powerful std::function-based callback:

void do_something(std::function<void()> callback)
{
  ...
  callback();
}

int num_callbacks=0;
...
auto callback=[&](){
  std::cout<<"callback called "<<++num_callbacks<<" times \n";
};
do_something(callback);

output: callback called 1 times

but we want to explore the challenge when this is not available (maybe because do_something is legacy C code, or because we do not want to incur the runtime penalty associated with std::function's usage of dynamic memory). Typically, C-style callback APIs accept an additional callback argument through a type-erased void*:

void do_something(void(*callback)(void*),void* callback_arg)
{
  ...
  callback(callback_arg);
}

and this is actually the only bit we need to force our capturing lambda function through do_something. The gist of the trick is passing the lambda function as the callback argument and providing a captureless thunk as the callback function pointer:

int num_callbacks=0;
...
auto callback=[&](){
  std::cout<<"callback called "<<++num_callbacks<<" times \n";
};
auto thunk=[](void* arg){ // note thunk is captureless
  (*static_cast<decltype(callback)*>(arg))();
};
do_something(thunk,&callback);

output: callback called 1 times

Note that we are not using dynamic memory nor doing any extra copying of the captured data, since callback is accessed in the point of invocation through a pointer; so, this technique can be advantageous even if modern std::functions could be used instead. The caveat is that the user code must make sure that captured data is alive when the callback is invoked (which is not the case when execution happens after scope exit if, for instance, it is carried out in a different thread).

Postcript

Tcbrindle poses the issue of lambda functions casting to function pointers with C++ linkage, where C linkage may be needed. Although this is rarely a problem in practice, it can be solved through another layer of indirection:

extern "C" void do_something(
  void(*callback)(void*),void* callback_arg)
{
  ...
  callback(callback_arg);
}

...

using callback_pair=std::pair<void(*)(void*),void*>;

extern "C" void call_thunk(void * arg)
{
  callback_pair* p=static_cast<callback_pair*>(arg);
  p->first(p->second);
}
...
int num_callbacks=0;
...
auto callback=[&](){
  std::cout<<"callback called "<<++num_callbacks<<" times \n";
};
auto thunk=[](void* arg){ // note thunk is captureless
  (*static_cast<decltype(callback)*>(arg))();
};
callback_pair p{thunk,&callback};
do_something(call_thunk,&p);

output: callback called 1 times