My advice on implementing stuff in C:

The problem is, for a standard Unix library, you have to offer an interface usable from C, Python, Perl, Fortran, Ada, Java and the rest of the bunch. Which means if you're not C, you have to fake it, and that in particular means you can't use any feature that might not work if the main or the calling code is written in C. Templates are unusable in an interface that has to be called by <i>any</i> other language, and objects won't work with any non-OO language like C.