advanced : Standard C++

The next big milestone for my CMS is to actually generate HTML files, and I'm almost there. I'll reach it in the next two weeks, most code is written, just a little bit of refactoring is needed. This blog post is about searching and replacing in strings. As I started last week with implementing the functionality, that turns the data in my CMS into an HTML website.

There needs to be a lot of text transformed, in order to turn a shared structure like a cross page layout into a single, special HTML file, one of those transformations is, to replace the internal links with the correct links. A link to a different page in the same website cannot be represented as a text link, instead it is represented by a linkid, which corresponds to the Page it points to. This is to have still the correct link, if the page is renamed or moved...

Overload 131 is now available

By Adrien Hamelin | Feb 11, 2016 02:50 AM | Tags: c++14 advanced

ACCU’s Overload journal of February 2016 is out. It contains the following C++ related articles.

Overload 131

From the journal:

Defining Concepts
Concepts provide a new way of constraining code. Andrew Sutton shows us how to define and use them. by Andrew Sutton

On Zero-Side-Effect Interactive Programming, Actors, and FSMs
Functional programming is alien to many programmers. Sergey Ignatchenko considers parallels between actors and finite state machines.

Template Programming Compile Time Combinations & Sieves
Functional style frequently uses sequences. Nick Weatherhead applies these ideas to combinations in C++. by Nick Weatherhead

Classdesc: A Reflection System for C++11
C++ lacks direct support for reflection. Russell Standish brings an automated reflection system for C++, Classdesc, up to date. by Russell Standish

QM Bites : Maximising Discoverability of Virtual Methods
C++11 introduced override as a contextual keyword. Matthew Wilson encourages us to use it. by Matthew Wilson

So Why is Spock Such a Big Deal?
Spock testing in a Java environment is all the rage. Russel Winder talks through the history of testing on the JVM and demonstrates why Spock is so groovy. by Russel Winder

Considerations for choosing the parallel computing strategy - Dori Exterman - @meetingcpp 2015

By Meeting C++ | Feb 9, 2016 08:34 AM | Tags: performance multithread multiprocess intermediate efficiency c++11 advanced

A new video from Meeting C++ 2015:

Considerations for choosing the parallel computing strategy

by Dori Exterman

Fundamentals of Type-Dependent Code Reuse - Mark Isaacson - NDC Oslo 2015

By Mark | Feb 7, 2016 11:41 PM | Tags: advanced

From NDC Oslo 2015:

Fundamentals of Type-Dependent Code Reuse

by Mark Isaacson

About the video:

This talk surveys different code reuse problems that can be solved by leveraging type information. Mark talks about how you can optimize your algorithms so that certain types use a "fast path", all while hiding that complexity from your users. He also talks about various ways to create "opt-in" functions for your classes. The talk is accessible to novices but builds gradually to complex ideas, including a theoretical C++17 "Mixer" class that allows users to add arbitrary functions to any type, including ints, on an instance by instance granularity.

Emulating C++17 Structured Bindings in C++14--John Bandela

By Adrien Hamelin | Feb 2, 2016 10:09 AM | Tags: c++14 advanced

How to use tuple return values with ease?

Emulating C++17 Structured Bindings in C++14

by John Bandela

From the article:

Bjarne Stroustrup back in Novemeber wrote a nice progress report, available here, of the Kona meeting. One of the proposals considered is called structured binding. The proposal addresses one of the inconveniences of returning multiple values from a function using tuples. While, it is very easy for a function to return multiple values, it is harder for the caller to use them. Here is an example from the write up.

consider the following function
tuple<T1,T2,T3> f() { /*...*/ return make_tuple(a,b,c); }
If we want to split the tuple into variables without specifying the type, we have to do this;
auto t = f();
auto x = get<1>(t);
auto y = get<2>(t);
auto z = get<3>(t);
The proposal puts forth the following syntax instead
auto {x,y,z} = f();               // x has type T1, y has type T2, z has type T3
I am excited for this feature, and for C++17 in general. While waiting for C++17, I decided to see how close I could get with C++14. Here is the result.
auto r = AUTO_TIE(x,y,z) = f();               // x has type T1, y has type T2, z has type T3

// Unlike the C++17 feature, you need to use r.x instead of just x
std::cout << r.x << "," << r.y << "," << r.z << "\n";

Using parallelism with boost::future

By Meeting C++ | Jan 29, 2016 07:54 AM | Tags: performance intermediate experimental c++14 c++11 boost advanced

A new blog entry about parallelism and boost::future:

Using parallelism with boost::future

by Jens Weller

From the article:

... While I'm fine with that the application locks up kind of hard during writing a GB zip file (its only job), I'd like to be as fast as possible. Thats why I decided to parallelize the part of the application that reads the file paths via boost::filesystem...