C++ is one of the most popular and most widely used programming languages, and it has been like that for three decades. Designed with a focus on performance, efficiency, and flexibility, C++ combines paradigms such as object-oriented, imperative, generic, and, more recently, functional programming. C++ is standardized by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and has undergone massive changes over the last decade. With the standardization of C++11, the language has entered into a new age, which has been widely referred to as modern C++. Type inference, move semantics, lambda expression, smart pointers, uniform initialization, variadic templates, and many other recent features have changed the way we write code in C++ to the point that it almost looks like a new programming language.
This book addresses many of the new features included in C++11, C++14, and the forthcoming C++17. This book is organized in recipes, each covering one particular language or library feature, or a common problem developers face and its typical solution using modern C++. Through more than 100 recipes, you will learn to master both core language features and the standard libraries, including those for strings, containers, algorithms, iterators, input/output, regular expressions, threads, filesystem, atomic operations, and utilities.
This book took about 6 months to write, and during this time the work on the C++17 standard has progressed. At the point of writing this preface, the standard is completed, but is yet to be approved and published later this year. A number of recipes in this book cover C++17 features, including fold expressions, constexpr if, structured bindings, new standard attributes, optional, any, variant and string_view types, and the filesystem library.
All the recipes in the book contain code samples that show how to use a feature or how to solve a problem. These code samples have been written using Visual Studio 2017, but have been also compiled using Clang and GCC. Since the support for various language and library features have been gradually added to all these compilers, it is recommended that you use the latest version to ensure that all of them are supported. At the time of writing this, the latest versions are GCC 7.0, Clang 5.0, and VC++ 2017 (version 19.1). Although GCC and Clang support all the features addressed in this book, VC++ is yet to support fold expressions, constexpr if, and searchers for std::search().
Chapter 1, Learning Modern Core Language Features, teaches you about modern core language features including type inference, uniform initialization, scoped enums, range-based for loops, structured bindings, and others.
Chapter 2, Working with Numbers and Strings, discusses how to convert between numbers and strings, generate pseudo-random numbers, work with regular expressions, and various types of string.
Chapter 3, Exploring Functions, dives into defaulted and deleted functions, variadic templates, lambda expressions, and higher-order functions.
Chapter 4, Preprocessor and Compilation, takes a look at various aspects of compilation, from how to perform conditional compilation, to compile-time assertions, code generation, or hinting the compiler with attributes.
Chapter 5, Standard Library Containers, Algorithms, and Iterators, introduces you to several standard containers, many algorithms, and teaches you how to write your own random access iterator.
Chapter 6, General Purpose Utilities, dives into the chrono library; the any, optional, and variant types; and learn about type traits.
Chapter 7, Working with Files and Streams, explains how to read and write data to/from streams, use I/O manipulators to control streams, and explores the filesystem library.
Chapter 8, Leveraging Threading and Concurrency, informs you how to work with threads, mutexes, locks, condition variables, promises, futures, and atomic types.
Chapter 9, Robustness and Performance, focuses on exceptions, constant correctness, type casts, smart pointers, and move semantics.
Chapter 10, Implementing Patterns and Idioms, covers various useful patterns and idioms, such as the pimpl idiom, the non-virtual interface idiom, or the curiously recurring template pattern.
Chapter 11, Exploring Testing Frameworks, helps you get a kickstart with three of the most widely used testing frameworks, Boost.Test, Google Test, and Catch.
The code presented in the book is available for download from your account at https://www.packtpub.com/, although I encourage you to try writing all the samples by yourself. In order to compile them, you need VC++ 2017 on Windows and GCC 7.0 or Clang 5.0 on Linux and Mac. If you don't have the latest version of the compiler, or you want to try another compiler, you can use one that is available online. Although there are various online platforms that you could use, I recommend https://wandbox.org/ for GCC and Clang and http://webcompiler.cloudapp.net/ for VC++.
This book is intended for all C++ developers, regardless of their experience level. The typical reader is an entry- or medium-level C++ developer who wants to master the language and become a prolific modern C++ developer. The experienced C++ developer will find a good reference for many C++11, C++14, and C++17 language and library features that may come in handy from time to time. The book consists of more than one hundred recipes that are simple, intermediate, or advanced. However, they all require prior knowledge of C++, and that includes functions, classes, templates, namespaces, macros, and others. Therefore, if you are not familiar with the language, it is recommended that you first read an introductory book to familiarize yourself with the core aspects, and then proceed with this book.