A good sum up.

The Pimpl Pattern - what you should know

by Bartlomiej Filipek

From the article:

Have you ever used the pimpl idiom in your code? No matter what’s your answer read on

In this article I’d like to gather all the essential information regarding this dependency breaking technique. We’ll discuss the implementation (const issue, back pointer, fast impl), pros and cons, alternatives and also show examples where is it used. You’ll also see how modern C++ can change this pattern. Moreover, I hope you’ll help me and provide your examples...