Book Image

Hands-On Functional Programming with C++

By : Alexandru Bolboaca
Book Image

Hands-On Functional Programming with C++

By: Alexandru Bolboaca

Overview of this book

Functional programming enables you to divide your software into smaller, reusable components that are easy to write, debug, and maintain. Combined with the power of C++, you can develop scalable and functional applications for modern software requirements. This book will help you discover the functional features in C++ 17 and C++ 20 to build enterprise-level applications. Starting with the fundamental building blocks of functional programming and how to use them in C++, you’ll explore functions, currying, and lambdas. As you advance, you’ll learn how to improve cohesion and delve into test-driven development, which will enable you in designing better software. In addition to this, the book covers architectural patterns such as event sourcing to help you get to grips with the importance of immutability for data storage. You’ll even understand how to “think in functions” and implement design patterns in a functional way. By the end of this book, you’ll be able to write faster and cleaner production code in C++ with the help of functional programming.
Table of Contents (23 chapters)
Free Chapter
1
Section 1: Functional Building Blocks in C++
7
Section 2: Design with Functions
12
Section 3: Reaping the Benefits of Functional Programming
17
Section 4: The Present and Future of Functional Programming in C++

Generators

Generators are a staple feature of functional programming languages. They are usually implemented through a combination of lambdas and lazy evaluation, allowing code like the following:

// pseudocode
vector<int> values = generate(1, maxInt, [](){/*generatorCode*/}).pick(100)

The generator function usually generates an infinite number of values, but because it is lazy evaluated, the 100 values materialize only when pick is called.

C++ doesn't yet have standard support for lazy evaluation and data generators, so we'll have to implement our own generator. It's worth noting that C++ 20 has adopted the inclusion of the awesome ranges library in the standard, which enables both these features. For the goals of this chapter, we'll stick to the standard available today, but you'll find the basic usage of ranges library in the final chapters of...