(Not) detecting bugs

by Andrzej Krzemieński

The following code contains a bug. A developer has spent quite some time looking for the source. The intent of this code is to iterate over two vectors simultaneously, from the first up to the one-before-last element. Thus the most interesting tools that will be employed will be boost::zip_iterator and std::prev.

#include <boost/iterator/zip_iterator.hpp>
#include <boost/tuple/tuple.hpp>
#include <vector>

using zip_iter = boost::zip_iterator<
                   boost::tuple<
                     std::vector<int>::iterator,
                     std::vector<int>::iterator
                   >
                 >;
int main()
{
  std::vector<int> v1 = {1, 2, 3, 4, 0};
  std::vector<int> v2 = {2, 3, 5, 7, 0};
    
  zip_iter beg {boost::make_tuple(v1.begin(), v2.begin())};
  zip_iter end {boost::make_tuple(v1.end(), v2.end())};
  
  auto process = [](zip_iter::reference){};
  std::for_each(beg, std::prev(end), process);
}

Add a const here, delete a const there…

by Bruce Dawson

I just completed a series of changes that shrunk the Chrome browser’s on-disk size on Windows by over a megabyte, moved about 500 KB of data from its read/write data segments to its read-only data segments, and reduced its private working set by about 200 KB per-process. The amusing thing about this series of changes is that they consisted entirely of removing const from some places, and adding const to others. Compilers be weird...

Generate lambdas for clarity and performance

by Björn Fahller

Higher order functions, functions that operate on other functions or returns functions, are familiar to those who have had some experience with functional programming, but they often seems magical to those who have not. Some of those with experience of using higher order functions have a gut feeling that they are expensive to use and prefer to avoid them...

Applying a permutation to a vector, part 4

by Raymond Chen

One question left unanswered was the computational complexity of the apply_permutation function...

Sorting by indices, part 2

by Raymond Chen

Before we dig into the Schwartzian transform, let's look at a more conventional generic way to sort by a key:

template<typename Iter, typename UnaryOperation, typename Compare>
void sort_by(Iter first, Iter last, UnaryOperation op, Compare comp)
{
  std::sort(first, last,
            [&](T& a, T& b) { return comp(op(a), op(b)); });
}

The idea here is that you give a unary operator op that produces a sort key, and we sort the items by that key according to the comparer...

passing functions to functions

by Vittorio Romeo

Since the advent of C++11 writing more functional code has become easier. Functional programming patterns and ideas are powerful additions to the C++ developer's huge toolbox. (I recently attended a great introductory talk on them by Phil Nash at the first London C++ Meetup - you can find an older recording here on YouTube.)

In this blog post I'll briefly cover some techniques that can be used to pass functions to other functions and show their impact on the generated assembly at the end...

Sorting by indices, part 1

by Raymond Chen

Okay, now we're going to start using the apply_permutation function that we beat to death for first part of this week...

Applying a permutation to a vector, part 3

by Raymond Chen

We spent the last two days looking at the apply_permutation function and arguing pros and cons of various implementation choices. Today's we're going to look at generalization...

Applying a permutation to a vector, part 2

by Raymond Chen

We left off our study of the apply_permutation function by wondering which version is bettern: the moving version of the swapping version. I'm not certain I have the answer, but here's my analysis...

Applying a permutation to a vector, part 1

by Raymond Chen

Suppose you have a vector indices of N integers that is a permutation of the numbers 0 through N − 1. Suppose you also have a vector v of N objects. The mission is to apply the permutation to the vector. If we let v2 represent the contents of the vector at the end of the operation, the requirement is that v2[i] = v[indices[i]] for all i...