Book Image

Hands-On Design Patterns with C++

By : Fedor G. Pikus
Book Image

Hands-On Design Patterns with C++

By: Fedor G. Pikus

Overview of this book

C++ is a general-purpose programming language designed with the goals of efficiency, performance, and flexibility in mind. Design patterns are commonly accepted solutions to well-recognized design problems. In essence, they are a library of reusable components, only for software architecture, and not for a concrete implementation. The focus of this book is on the design patterns that naturally lend themselves to the needs of a C++ programmer, and on the patterns that uniquely benefit from the features of C++, in particular, the generic programming. Armed with the knowledge of these patterns, you will spend less time searching for a solution to a common problem and be familiar with the solutions developed from experience, as well as their advantages and drawbacks. The other use of design patterns is as a concise and an efficient way to communicate. A pattern is a familiar and instantly recognizable solution to specific problem; through its use, sometimes with a single line of code, we can convey a considerable amount of information. The code conveys: "This is the problem we are facing, these are additional considerations that are most important in our case; hence, the following well-known solution was chosen." By the end of this book, you will have gained a comprehensive understanding of design patterns to create robust, reusable, and maintainable code.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)

Template instantiations

The template name is not a type and cannot be used to declare a variable or call a function. To create a type or a function, the template must be instantiated. Most of the time, the templates are instantiated implicitly when they are used. We will again start with the function templates.

Function templates

To use a function template to generate a function, we have to specify which types should be used for all template type parameters. We can just specify the types directly:

template <typename T>
T half(T x) { return x/2; }
int i = half<int>(5);

This instantiates the half function template with the int type. The type is explicitly specified; we could call the function with an argument of another...