Quick Q: What is noexcept useful for? -- StackOverflow

By Blog Staff | Dec 11, 2014 10:58 AM | Tags: None

Quick A: Guaranteeing "this function won't throw" enables optimization opportunities.

Recently on SO:

What is noexcept useful for?

I saw that c++11 added the noexcept keyword. But I don't really understand why is it useful.

If the function throws when it's not supposed to throw - why would I want the program to crash?

So when should I use it?

Also, how will it work along with compiling with /Eha and using _set_se_translator? This means that any line of code can throw c++ exception - because it might throw a SEH exception (Because of accessing protected memory) and it will be translated to c++ exception.

What will happen then?

A gotcha with ptr_vector -- Andrzej Krzemieński

By Felix Petriconi | Dec 10, 2014 08:34 AM | Tags: intermediate boost

Do you know Boost.Pointer Container? Andrzej gives some useful information in his recent blog entry:

A gotcha with ptr_vector

He gives answers to these questions:

What would you use boost::ptr_vector for? Why would you need to have a vector of pointers, which you want to delete yourself? Is it because:

1. You want the objects to remain at the same address even if you re-allocate the array under the vector?
2. You want to inter-operate with a library that already deals with owing pointers?
3. You want it to be faster than if you were storing values in std::vector?
4. You want the “polymorphic behavior” of your objects?

New Security Feature in Visual Studio 2015

By Aurelia-Doina Popa | Dec 10, 2014 08:32 AM | Tags: visual studio intermediate

An article about a security feature in Visual Studio 2015, called Control Flow Guard.

Visual Studio 2015 Preview: Work-in-Progress Security Feature

by Jim Hogg

From the article:

By simply adding a new option to your Project, the Visual C++ compiler will inject extra security checks into your binaries. These will detect attempts to hijack your code. The check will stop execution of your code, before the hijacker can do damage to your data or PC...

Property Testing in C++ -- Jeremy Wright

By Jordi Mon Companys | Dec 10, 2014 08:29 AM | Tags: None

In case you missed it, this may be midly controversial but we felt it could be of interest:

Property Testing in C++

by Jeremy Wright

From the article:

One might say tests are shiny. I don't know if they are really shiny as much as I found another cool use for uniform_int_distribution<>...

Qt 5.4 released --Lars Knoll

By Razvan Pascalau | Dec 10, 2014 08:23 AM | Tags: qt framework basic

A new major version of the Qt has been released.

Qt 5.4 released

From the news article:

I am happy to announce that Qt 5.4 has been released today and is available for download from qt.io. Together with Qt 5.4, we have also released Qt Creator 3.3 and an update to Qt for device creation on embedded Linux and embedded Android.

But let’s start with Qt 5.4. One of the main focus areas of this Qt release has been around Web technologies and we have a lot of cool new things to offer there...

Tutorial to develop a client side web application in C++ with PNaCl -- Chrome Developer Guide

By miltonm | Dec 10, 2014 08:19 AM | Tags: None

In case you missed it, now you can develop web apps in C++ to run natively on Google Chrome. This tutorial shows how to develop a Native Client module in C++ and build and run it using PNaCl toolchain:

C++ Tutorial: Getting Started (Part 1)

This tutorial shows how to build and run a web application using Portable Native Client (PNaCl). This is a client-side application that uses HTML, JavaScript and a Native Client module written in C++. The PNaCl toolchain is used to enable running the Native Client module directly from a web page...

Portable Native Client or PNacl, which is supported on Google Chrome at the moment, lets you compile and run native code developed in C or C++ within a secure sandbox in browser. PNaCl uses the LLVM toolchain to generate OS-independent and architecture agnostic intermediate bytecode which is later loaded, translated and executed by the browser. To get more information on PNaCl and it's less portable companion NaCl check the native client developer documentation.

Why Students Need the CppCat Code Analyzer -- Andrey Karpov

By Andrey Karpov | Dec 10, 2014 08:11 AM | Tags: None

Today on viva64:

Why Students Need the CppCat Code Analyzer

by Andrey Karpov

CppCat is a simple static code analyzer capable of detecting bugs in C/C++ programs. We started granting free academic licenses to all interested (students, teachers, and so on). For the sake of popularizing CppCat among students, I decided to write this post about errors that can be found in student lab work tasks posted at Pastebin.com...

Blaze 2.2 released

By Felix Petriconi | Dec 10, 2014 08:02 AM | Tags: performance

Blaze, an open-source, high-performance C++ math library for dense and sparse arithmetic, released their new version.

C++ Template Metaprogramming Introduction -- Nicolás Brailovsky

By ltorje | Dec 10, 2014 01:53 AM | Tags: None

In case you missed it, from Nicolás Brailovsky's blog -- an interesting post after you get past a little ranting:

C++ Template Metaprogramming Introduction

by Nicolás Brailovsky

From the article:

First, we need to start with a little clarification: using template <class T> to parametrize a class, something like std::vector does, is not template metaprogramming. That’s just a generic class (Java-pun intended). That is indeed a useful case for templates, but it has little fun in it.

Template metaprogramming is much more fun than mere generic classes...

A few notes:

• Even if template metaprogramming isn't something that every C++ developer will do on daily basis, it's worth being able to understand when you see it.
• For homework, try solving the Hanoi Tower problem by using template metaprogramming. [A sample for the 8-Queens problem is available here.]

An interview with Hartmut Kaiser and Scott Meyers

By Meeting C++ | Dec 9, 2014 10:19 AM | Tags: interview

A first highlight from Meeting C++ 2014:

An interview with Hartmut Kaiser and Scott Meyers

by Jens Weller