Table Of ContentAdvanced C++ Programming
Cookbook
Become an expert C++ programmer by mastering concepts
like templates, concurrency, and type deduction
Dr. Rian Quinn
BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI
Advanced C++ Programming Cookbook
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Contributors
About the author
Dr. Rian Quinn is the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) in the Advanced Technologies
Business Unit at Assured Information Security, Inc., having focused on trusted computing,
hypervisor-related technologies, machine learning/artificial intelligence, and cybersecurity
for more than 10 years, and has 9 years of technical management and business development
experience. He holds a Ph.D. in computer engineering, with specializations in information
assurance and computer architectures, from Binghamton University. He is the cofounder
and lead developer of the Bareflank hypervisor, and is an active member of several open
source projects, including Microsoft's Guideline Support Library (GSL) and OpenXT. Rian
previously wrote Hands-On System Programming with C++.
About the reviewers
Sergey Gomon started his journey in IT 12 years ago at Belarus State University of
Informatics and Radioelectronics, in the Artificial Intelligence department. He has about
8 years of industrial programming experience using C++ in several fields, such as
network programming, information security, and image processing. He currently works at
SolarWinds MSP and is an activist in the CoreHard C++ community.
Zhuo Qingliang (also known as KDr2 online) is presently working at paodingai.com, a
start-up FinTech company in China that is dedicated to improving the financial industry by
using artificial intelligence technologies. He has over 10 years of experience in Linux, C,
C++, Python, Perl, and Java development. He is interested in programming, doing
consulting work, and participating in and contributing to the open source community
(including the Julia community, of course).
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Table of Contents
Preface 1
Chapter 1: Getting Started with Library Development 7
Technical requirements 8
Understanding the principle of least surprise 8
Getting ready 8
How to do it... 9
How it works... 10
Example 1 10
Example 2 11
Example 3 11
Example 4 12
Example 5 13
Example 6 14
Example 7 15
Example 8 15
Example 9 16
How to namespace everything 17
Getting ready 17
How to do it... 17
How it works... 18
Example 1 18
Example 2 19
Header-only libraries 20
Getting ready 20
How to do it... 21
How it works... 22
How to handle includes 22
Global variables 24
Issues with C-style macros 26
How to implement a large library as header-only 27
Learning library development best practices 29
Getting ready 29
How to do it... 30
How it works... 30
What about warnings? 30
Static and dynamic analysis 31
Documentation 33
CII Best Practices 34
Learning how to use the boost APIs 34
Getting ready 34
How to do it... 35
Table of Contents
How it works... 35
Example 1 36
Example 2 36
See also 37
Chapter 2: Using Exceptions for Error Handling 38
Technical requirements 39
Using the noexcept specifier 39
Getting ready 39
How to do it... 40
How it works... 41
Using the noexcept operator 46
Getting ready 47
How to do it... 47
How it works... 48
Using RAII 54
Getting ready 54
How to do it... 55
How it works... 56
Learning why to never throw exceptions in destructors 62
Getting ready 62
How to do it... 62
How it works... 63
Easily creating your own exception classes 68
Getting ready 68
How to do it... 68
How it works... 69
Chapter 3: Implementing Move Semantics 72
Technical requirements 73
Using compiler-generated special class member functions and the
Big Five 73
Getting ready 73
How to do it... 74
How it works... 74
Making your class movable 77
Getting ready 78
How to do it... 78
How it works... 78
Move-only types 83
Getting ready 83
How to do it... 84
How it works... 84
Implementing the noexcept move constructor 88
Getting ready 89
How to do it... 89
[ ii ]
Table of Contents
How it works... 90
Learning to be wary of const&& 92
Getting ready 92
How to do it... 93
How it works... 93
Referencing qualified member functions 95
Getting ready 95
How to do it... 95
How it works... 96
Exploring objects that cannot be moved or copied 98
Getting ready 98
How to do it... 98
How it works... 99
Chapter 4: Using Templates for Generic Programming 102
Technical requirements 103
Implementing SFINAE 103
Getting ready 103
How to do it... 104
How it works... 105
Learning perfect forwarding 112
Getting ready 112
How to do it... 112
How it works... 113
Using if constexpr 117
Getting ready 117
How to do it... 118
How it works... 118
Using tuples to work with parameter packs 121
Getting ready 121
How to do it... 121
How it works... 122
Using type traits to overload functions and objects 127
Getting ready 128
How to do it... 128
How it works... 129
Learning how to implement template<auto> 133
Getting ready 134
How to do it... 134
How it works... 135
Working with explicit template declarations 137
Getting ready 137
How to do it... 137
How it works... 138
Chapter 5: Concurrency and Synchronization 141
[ iii ]
