C is 50 years old or something like that, and it still doesn't have a standard hash map.
Sure its not impossible for C to get that, but at the same time, they are trying to write git not fix C.
* My point is, that hash maps and data structures like that are clearly not the priority of C or they would **exist by now.
** by exist I mean either in C standard, or a at least a community consensus about which one you pick, unless you need something specific.
> or they would *exist by now.
See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45120171
Nobody needs to change a language standard for 9 lines of code. When you really want to use a hash map, its likely that you care about performance, so you don't want to use a generic implementation anyway.
> or a at least a community consensus about which one you pick
There is a hash table API in POSIX: