Book Image

Modern C++ Programming Cookbook

By : Marius Bancila
Book Image

Modern C++ Programming Cookbook

By: Marius Bancila

Overview of this book

C++ is one of the most widely used programming languages. Fast, efficient, and flexible, it is used to solve many problems. The latest versions of C++ have seen programmers change the way they code, giving up on the old-fashioned C-style programming and adopting modern C++ instead. Beginning with the modern language features, each recipe addresses a specific problem, with a discussion that explains the solution and offers insight into how it works. You will learn major concepts about the core programming language as well as common tasks faced while building a wide variety of software. You will learn about concepts such as concurrency, performance, meta-programming, lambda expressions, regular expressions, testing, and many more in the form of recipes. These recipes will ensure you can make your applications robust and fast. By the end of the book, you will understand the newer aspects of C++11/14/17 and will be able to overcome tasks that are time-consuming or would break your stride while developing.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
Title Page
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface

Using unique_ptr to uniquely own a memory resource


Manual handling of heap memory allocation and releasing is one of the most controversial features of C++. All allocations must be properly paired with a corresponding delete operation in the correct scope. If the scope of memory allocation is a function, for instance, and memory needs to be released before the function returns, then this has to happen on all the return paths, including the abnormal situation where a function returns because of an exception. C++11 features, such as rvalues and move semantics, have enabled the development of smart pointers; these pointers can manage a memory resource and automatically release it when the smart pointer is destroyed. In this recipe, we will look at std::unique_ptr: a smart pointer that owns and manages another object or an array of objects allocated on the heap and performs the disposal operation when the smart pointer goes out of scope.

Getting ready

For this recipe, you need to be familiar with...