Quick Q: Does std::vector resize automatically when inserting new elements?--StackOverflow

By Jared Mulconry | Nov 28, 2014 09:54 AM | Tags: basics

Quick A: Yes.

Recently on SO:

Do Vectors resize automatically?

I am very sorry that I am asking such a beginner question but I am finding contradictory information online. I would ask at University but it is out until February next year.

Do Vectors resize automatically? Or do you need to check the current size periodically and resize when you need more room. It looks to be resizing for me automatically but I'm not sure if that is a feature or the compiler waving a magic wand.

Anti-IF idioms in C++ -- Marco Arena

By Marco Arena | Nov 28, 2014 09:46 AM | Tags: intermediate community c++14 c++11

I'm showing interactive examples of "anti-IF" idioms in C++, inspired by C# snippets which Claudio Pattarello proposed at the Italian Agile Day 2014.

Anti-IF idioms in C++

by Marco Arena

From the article:

In this post I’d like to show you how to rewrite these idioms in C++, starting from a C# snippet. And the resulting code is pretty much identical. [...] I'm not saying "this is the best thing you can do in C++". [...] Sure, we have specific idioms in our favorite language but I think it’s lovely that we are able to reuse the same code from other languages with a little effort. And this is also appealing for other programmers who want to experience C++, maybe by starting coding idioms they know. ...

Metaprogramming with Modern C++: The Haskell Metaphor -- Manu Sánchez

By Jordi Mon Companys | Nov 28, 2014 09:35 AM | Tags: None

If you are one of who have been following our post series about template metaprogramming with modern C++, at this time you should have become a C++ template Guru. At least thats what I expect .

You know about class templates, function templates, value parameters, type parameters, variadic templates… Your template metaprogramming toolbox is full of great things to play with. Thats good, but you want to start playing with your compiler, writting some cool metaprograms.

Metaprogramming with Modern C++: The Haskell Metaphor

by Manu Sánchez

From the article:

Template metaprogramming was used to improve perfomance on high-computing libraries too, with some clever code transformations done thanks to tmp. The best example of this is the blitz++ library, one of the first examples of a real use case of template metaprogramming.

Since C++11 the language has evolved to support some ways of metaprogramming as a common and useful thing. Metaprogramming became a first class citizen in C++, instead of the obscure, magical, and freaking way to abuse the compiler it was at the beginning...

A software design principle: Don’t make me use your design -- Diego Rodríguez-Losada

By Jordi Mon Companys | Nov 28, 2014 09:32 AM | Tags: None

Developing code in C++ for robotics, I often faced the problem of communicating via serial port with a robot, a sensor or any other device. C and C++ are languages supposedly very close to hardware. Furthermore, they are the most common and oldest mainstream programming languages out there. So communicating over a serial port in a portable way should be straightforward.

A software design principle: Don’t make me use your design

by Diego Rodríguez-Losada

From the article:

I have seen the pattern described in the article a few times in C and C++ projects, but very rarely in other languages (at least those that I have used more as java and python) and I believe there is a reason, not directly related to software design for it: the lack of a widely used dependency manager. And no, OS package managers, installers and so, are not enough to solve this problem. Even if the authors of these libraries decide to decouple the functionality of the SerialPort basic wrapper in their design, there is little gain in it, users should still manually extract those files and integrate them in their projects, which doesn’t sound as reasonable engineering and will produce, for sure, maintenance problems and lack of updates. It is really unlikely that the authors will decide to create a separate project/library for the SerialPort, it is more effort not only to do it in the short term, but also to maintain and work with it in the mid and long terms. So developers just roll out their designs, and fill the functionality in it as required. I’ve done it so many times too...

“Effective Modern C++” from Scott Meyers Review -- CoderGears Team

By Blog Staff | Nov 27, 2014 03:54 PM | Tags: None

Today on CoderGrears:

“Effective Modern C++” from Scott Meyers Review

by CoderGears Team

From the article:

This month a new book from Scott Meyers become available, it’s the last one of its Effective software development series (More Effective C++, Effective STL   and Effective C++ ) .

In this book Scott Meyers focus on the new C++11 and C++14 standrads, currently few books talk about them. In the other side many resources are available on the web discussing these new standards. Why I need to read this book?

Here’s our feedback...

The Python API and C++ -- Scott Prager

By Blog Staff | Nov 27, 2014 03:49 PM | Tags: None

Some interspecies dating, appropriately on the "multi-paradigm" blog:

The Python API and C++

by Scott Prager

From the article:

Recently, for a job interview task, I was asked to write a Python module with a C or C++ implementation to solve an otherwise simple task. Obviously, I chose C++. While I had never used the Python API before, I found that the existing information on extending Python with C quite sufficient. What surprised me, however, is how little information existed for using C++. A few libraries exist, like Boost.Python, PyCXX, and some utilities that parse C++ to create Python bindings, but I didn't find much in the way of actual information without examining the sources of these libraries. ...

... I have started working on a little utility library (https://github.com/splinterofchaos/py-cxx) for personal use... [The Python C API has] many restrictions and it certainly puts a cramp on C++'s style, but the moral of this store is that just because you need to work with a C API doesn't mean you can't use modern C++ techniques.

Building Portable Games in C++ -- Guy Kogus

By Blog Staff | Nov 26, 2014 01:50 PM | Tags: None

Fresh on Dr. Dobb's:

Building Portable Games in C++

By Guy Kogus

The cocos-2d-x open source framework can be used to build games, apps, and other interactive software in C++. Here's a hands-on guide to using it to write and port games.

From the article:

Our game, Ready Steady Bang, was written using cocos2d-iphone, which we were considering using for our next game, Ready Steady Play. Then I remembered the C++ gaming framework cocos2d-x and its promise of cross-platform compilation.

In this article, I break down how I developed the Ready Steady Play game using cocos2d-x and discuss the porting travails of moving the final code from iOS to Android and Windows Phone 8. I used v2.2.x of cocos-2dx, but most of this text should be applicable for v3.x...

Container Algorithms -- Eric Niebler

By Blog Staff | Nov 25, 2014 07:24 AM | Tags: None

Some more details about the Ranges proposal that was well received by the ISO C++ committee at this month's meeting in Urbana-Champaign:

Container Algorithms

by Eric Niebler

From the article:

... So to sum up, in the world of N4128, we have this:

• Eager algorithms that can mutate but that don’t compose.
• Lazy algorithms that can’t mutate but do compose.

Whoops! Something is missing. If I want to read a bunch of ints, sort them, and make them unique, here’s what that would look like in N4128:

extern std::vector<int> read_ints();
std::vector<int> ints = read_ints();
std::sort(ints);
auto i = std::unique(ints);
ints.erase(i, ints.end());

Blech! A few people noticed this shortcoming of my proposal. A week before the meeting, I was seriously worried that this issue would derail the whole effort. I needed a solution, and quick.

Container Algorithms

The solution I presented in Urbana is container algorithms. These are composable algorithms that operate eagerly on container-like things, mutating them in-place, then forwarding them on for further processing. For instance, the read+sort+unique example looks like this with container algorithms:

std::vector<int> ints =
    read_ints() | cont::sort | cont::unique;

Much nicer. Since the container algorithm executes eagerly, it can take a vector and return a vector. The range views can’t do that...

Updates to my trip report

By Herb Sutter | Nov 24, 2014 10:49 AM | Tags: None

I wanted to add a few more things to my meeting trip report. I updated the trip report in-place, but for those who want to see the "diffs" I'll also post just the new parts here as a standalone post:

There were 106 experts at this meeting, officially representing 7 nations. This meeting saw a recent-record number of papers, including over 120 in the pre-meeting mailing.

In addition to the other things I mentioned, we also approved several other interesting changes, including the following highlights:

• Adopted N4230, which allows nested namespace definitions like namespace A::B::C { } as a convenient shorthand for namespace A { namespace B { namespace C { } } }.
• Adopted N3922, which fixes the most common pitfall with auto and {}, so that auto x{y}; now deduces the sane and expected thing, namely the type of y. Before this, it deduced initializer_list which was unfortunate and surprising. So, fixed.
• Adopted N4086, which removes trigraphs. Yes, we removed something from C++... and something that was inherited from C! But wait, there's more...
• Adopted N4190, and actually removed (not just deprecated) several archaic things from the C++ standard library, including auto_ptr, bind1st/bind2nd, ptr_fun/mem_fun/mem_fun_ref, random_shuffle, and a few more. Those are now all removed from the draft C++ 17 standard library and will not be part of future portable C++.

We also did work and made progress on a lot of other proposals, including modules. See the pre-meeting mailing for details about papers considered at this meeting.

Can Qt's moc be replaced by C++ reflection? -- Olivier Goffart

By Blog Staff | Nov 24, 2014 01:17 AM | Tags: None

In case you missed it:

Can Qt's moc be replaced by C++ reflection?

by Olivier Goffart

From the article:

The Qt toolkit has often been criticized for extending C++ and requiring a non-standard code generator (moc) to provide introspection.
Now, the C++ standardization committee is looking at how to extend C++ with introspection and reflection. As the current maintainer of Qt's moc I thought I could write a bit about the need of Qt, and even experiment a bit.

In this blog post, I will comment on the current proposal draft, and try to analyze what one would need to be able to get rid of moc.