More C++ Idioms

Preface

C++ has indeed become too "expert friendly" -- Bjarne Stroustrup, The Problem with Programming, Technology Review, Nov 2006. Stroustrup's saying is true because experts are intimately familiar with the idioms in the language. With the increase in the idioms a programmer understands, the language becomes friendlier to him or her. The objective of this open content book is to present modern C++ idioms to programmers who have moderate level of familiarity with C++, and help elevate their knowledge so that C++ feels much friendlier to them. It is designed to be an exhaustive catalog of reusable idioms that expert C++ programmers often use while programming or designing using C++. This is an effort to capture their techniques and vocabulary into a single work. This book describes the idioms in a regular format: Name-Intent-Motivation-Solution-References, which is succinct and helps speed learning. By their nature, idioms tend to have appeared in the C++ community and in published work many times. An effort has been made to refer to the original source(s) where possible; if you find a reference incomplete or incorrect, please feel free to suggest or make improvements. The world is invited to catalog reusable pieces of C++ knowledge (similar to the book on design patterns by GoF). The goal here is to first build an exhaustive catalog of modern C++ idioms and later evolve it into an idiom language, just like a pattern language. Finally, the contents of this book can be redistributed under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. Aimed toward: Anyone with an intermediate level of knowledge in C++ and supported language paradigms

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Table of Contents

Note: synonyms for each idiom are listed in parentheses.

1. Adapter Template
2. Address Of
3. Algebraic Hierarchy
4. Attach by Initialization
5. Attorney-Client
6. Barton-Nackman trick
7. Base-from-Member
8. Boost mutant
9. Calling Virtuals During Initialization
10. Capability Query
11. Checked delete
12. Clear-and-minimize
13. Coercion by Member Template
14. Compile Time Control Structures
15. Computational Constructor
16. Concrete Data Type
17. Const auto_ptr
18. Construct On First Use
19. Construction Tracker
20. Copy-and-swap
21. Copy-on-write
22. Counted Body (intrusive reference counting)
23. Curiously Recurring Template Pattern
24. Detached Counted Body (non-intrusive reference counting)
25. Empty Base Optimization
26. Emulated Exception
27. enable-if
28. Envelope Letter
29. Erase-Remove
30. Examplar
31. Execute-Around Pointer
32. Export Guard Macro
33. Expression-template
34. Fake Vtable
35. Fast Pimpl
36. Final Class
37. Free Function Allocators
38. Function Object
39. Generic Container Idioms
40. Hierarchy Generation
41. Include Guard Macro
42. Inline Guard Macro
43. Inner Class
44. Int-To-Type
45. Interface Class
46. Iterator Pair
47. Making New Friends
48. Metafunction
49. Move Constructor
50. Multi-statement Macro
51. Member Detector
52. Named Constructor
53. Named External Argument
54. Named Loop (labeled loop)
55. Named Parameter
56. Named Template Parameters
57. Nifty Counter (Schwarz Counter)
58. Non-copyable Mixin
59. Non-member get
60. Non-member Non-friend Function
61. Non-throwing swap
62. Non-Virtual Interface (Public Overloaded Non-Virtuals Call Protected Non-Overloaded Virtuals)
63. nullptr
64. Object Generator
65. Object Template
66. Overload Set Creation
67. Parameterized Base Class (Parameterized Inheritance)
68. Pimpl (Handle Body, Compilation Firewall, Cheshire Cat)
69. Policy Clone (Metafunction wrapper)
70. Policy-based Design
71. Polymorphic Exception
72. Recursive Type Composition
73. Requiring or Prohibiting Heap-based Objects
74. Resource Acquisition Is Initialization (RAII, Execute-Around Object, Scoped Locking)
75. Resource Return
76. Return Type Resolver
77. Runtime Static Initialization Order Idioms
78. Safe bool
79. Scope Guard
80. Substitution Failure Is Not An Error (SFINAE)
81. Shortening Long Template Names
82. Shrink-to-fit
83. Small Object Optimization
84. Smart Pointer
85. Storage Class Tracker
86. Tag Dispatching
87. Temporary Base Class
88. Temporary Proxy
89. The result_of technique
90. Thin Template
91. Traits
92. Type Erasure
93. Type Generator (Templated Typedef)
94. Type Safe Enum
95. Type Selection
96. Virtual Constructor
97. Virtual Friend Function