What is a smart pointer and when should I use one? -- StackOverflow

By Blog Staff | Mar 19, 2013 09:11 AM | Tags: basics

There are many reasons to love the now-standard std::unique_ptr and std::shared_ptr. They're well summarized in this classic on StackOverflow.

You don't often see a SO question with 185 upvotes, 117 favorites, and 269 upvotes on the selected answer. Here's one:

What is a smart pointer and when should I use one?

Quick Q: Why use C varargs when you have initializer_lists and variadic templates? -- StackOverflow

By Blog Staff | Mar 18, 2013 02:06 PM | Tags: basics

Quick A: No reason, varargs are type-unsafe and entirely superseded by C++11 features (unless you need C compatibility).

Why use variadic arguments now when initializer lists are available?

I've been wondering what are the advantages of variadic arguments over initializer lists. Both offer the same ability -- to pass indefinite number of arguments to a function.

 

What I personally think is initializer lists are a little more elegant. Syntax is less awkward.

Also, it appears that initializer lists have significantly better performance as the number of arguments grows.

 

So what am I missing, besides the possibility to use use variadic arguments in C as well?

Preconditions, Part 3 -- Andrzej Krzemieński

By Blog Staff | Mar 14, 2013 03:05 PM | Tags: intermediate

Andrzej continues with a third installment in his series on preconditions.

Preconditions, Part 3

by Andrzej Krzemieński

In this post, I examine a couple of cases and try to answer the question when and how to specify preconditions, and when it is better not to do it. I believe it gives a deeper insight into the nature of preconditions.

New paper: N3551, Random Number Generation in C++11 -- Walter Brown

By Blog Staff | Mar 14, 2013 02:31 PM | Tags: intermediate

Ed.: Most standardization papers are about technical changes. It's not often you get a tutorial written by a world-class expert submitted as a WG21 paper. Thanks, Walter!

A new WG21 paper is available. A copy is linked below, and the paper will also appear in the next normal WG21 mailing. If you are not a committee member, please use the comments section below or the std-proposals forum for public discussion.

Document number: N3551

Date: 2013-03-12

Random Number Generation in C++11

by Walter Brown

Excerpt:

For programmers seeking to familiarize themselves with the <random> component of the
C++11 standard library, we provide background information and tutorial guidance with numerous
usage examples.

1 Introduction 1
2 Getting started 2
3 An anti-pattern 3
4 Initializing an engine 3
5 What else can an engine do? 4
6 Engines in the standard library 5
7 Sharing an engine 5
8 Distributions in the standard library 6
9 What else can a distribution do? 8
10 A simple toolkit 9
11 A final example 9
12 Caveat lector! 10
13 What’s next? 11
14 Acknowledgments 11
15 Bibliography 11
16 Revision history 12

Why is noexcept checked dynamically? -- StackOverflow

By Blog Staff | Mar 12, 2013 11:49 AM | Tags: intermediate

Quick A: Because exceptions occur (or not) dynamically.

Why is C++0x's noexcept checked dynamically?

I am curious about the rationale behind noexcept in the C++0x FCD. throw(X) was [deprecated], but noexcept seems to do the same thing. Is there a reason that noexcept isn't checked at compile time? It seems that it would be better if these functions were checked statically that they only dcalled throwing functions within a try block.

What's the difference between push_back vs emplace_back? -- StackOverflow

By Blog Staff | Mar 12, 2013 04:45 AM | Tags: basics

Quick A: When correctly implemented per the standard, you get in-place construction with perfect forwarding.

Longer question:

push_back vs emplace_back

I'm a bit confused regarding the difference between push_back and emplace_back.

 

void emplace_back(Type&& _Val);
void push_back(const Type& _Val);
void push_back(Type&& _Val);

As there is a push_back overload taking a rvalue reference I don't quite see what the purpose of emplace_back becomes?

What does std::function do that function pointers don't? -- StackOverflow

By Blog Staff | Mar 11, 2013 04:53 PM | Tags: intermediate

Quick A: A lot. They can bind to anything callable, not just functions. And they can perform conversions on parameter and return types.

Is there a use case for std::function that is not covered by function pointers, or is it just syntactic sugar?

The notation for std::function is quite nice when compared to function pointers. However, other than that, I can't find a use case where it couldn't be replaced by pointers. So is it just syntactic sugar for function pointers?

What new capabilities do user-defined literals add to C++? -- StackOverflow

By Blog Staff | Mar 8, 2013 04:57 PM | Tags: None

Over the past year, UDLs have started to become available in some popular C++ compilers, including gcc 4.7 and Clang 3.1. As people are adopting those compilers in real code and starting to be ablel to use this feature, a natural question is how useful they are and how to use them:

What new capabilities do user-defined literals add to C++?

C++11 introduces user-defined literals which will allow the introduction of new literal syntax based on existing literals (int, hex, string, float) so that any type will be able to have a literal presentation.

Examples:

// imaginary numbers
std::complex<long double> operator "" _i(long double d) // cooked form
{
    return std::complex<long double>(0, d);
}
auto val = 3.14_i; // val = complex<long double>(0, 3.14)

// binary values
int operator "" _B(const char*); // raw form
int answer = 101010_B; // answer = 42

// std::string
std::string operator "" _s(const char* str, size_t /*length*/)
{
    return std::string(str);
}
auto hi = "hello"_s + " world"; // + works, "hello"_s is a string not a pointer

// units
assert(1_kg == 2.2_lb); // give or take 0.00462262 pounds

At first glance this looks very cool but I'm wondering how applicable it really is, [...] do you feel this feature will justify itself? What other literals would you like to define that will make your C++ code more readable?

Quick Q: Why isn't std::initializer_list a core-language built-in? -- StackOverflow

By Blog Staff | Mar 6, 2013 12:24 PM | Tags: basics

Quick A: Because it doesn't have to be. It's "the C++ way" to prefer library solutions, and initializer_list shows how far you can get with a pure library solution, then the rest of the way with minimal language support to create initializer_list objects.

Recently on SO:

Why isn't std::initializer_list a core-language built-in?

It seems to me that it's quite an important feature of C++11 and yet it doesn't have its own reserved keyword (or something alike).

 

Instead, initializer_list it's just a template class from the standard library that has a special, implicit mapping from the new braced-init-list {...} syntax that's handled by the compiler.

At first thought, this solution is quite hacky. ...

The Importance of std::function -- Malte Skarupke

By Blog Staff | Mar 5, 2013 01:03 PM | Tags: intermediate

See also "Generalizing Observer", written ten years ago when std::function was first adopted.

The Importance of std::function

by Malte Skarupke

... Classically an update loop would be implemented something like this: ...

And this is a good solution at first. But you’ve got that inheritance in there, and that doesn’t scale. You will probably want to add a render loop and maybe a separate update loop for the editor. Once you’ve got that many base classes it makes sense to combine them into one. And now you’ve just started on the way of having a big base class that gets used everywhere. Soon enough adding something different to the update loop involves a whole lot of unnecessary work.

Here is an alternate update loop using std::function: ...