Book Image

Modern C++ Programming Cookbook - Second Edition

By : Marius Bancila
5 (1)
Book Image

Modern C++ Programming Cookbook - Second Edition

5 (1)
By: Marius Bancila

Overview of this book

C++ has come a long way to be one of the most widely used general-purpose languages that is fast, efficient, and high-performance at its core. The updated second edition of Modern C++ Programming Cookbook addresses the latest features of C++20, such as modules, concepts, coroutines, and the many additions to the standard library, including ranges and text formatting. The book is organized in the form of practical recipes covering a wide range of problems faced by modern developers. The book also delves into the details of all the core concepts in modern C++ programming, such as functions and classes, iterators and algorithms, streams and the file system, threading and concurrency, smart pointers and move semantics, and many others. It goes into the performance aspects of programming in depth, teaching developers how to write fast and lean code with the help of best practices. Furthermore, the book explores useful patterns and delves into the implementation of many idioms, including pimpl, named parameter, and attorney-client, teaching techniques such as avoiding repetition with the factory pattern. There is also a chapter dedicated to unit testing, where you are introduced to three of the most widely used libraries for C++: Boost.Test, Google Test, and Catch2. By the end of the book, you will be able to effectively leverage the features and techniques of C++11/14/17/20 programming to enhance the performance, scalability, and efficiency of your applications.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
13
Bibliography
14
Other Books You May Enjoy
15
Index

Using string_view instead of constant string references

When working with strings, temporary objects are created all the time, even if you might not be really aware of it. Many times, these temporary objects are irrelevant and only serve the purpose of copying data from one place to another (for example, from a function to its caller). This represents a performance issue because they require memory allocation and data copying, which should be avoided. For this purpose, the C++17 standard provides a new string class template called std::basic_string_view that represents a non-owning constant reference to a string (that is, a sequence of characters). In this recipe, you will learn when and how you should use this class.

Getting ready

The string_view class is available in the namespace std in the string_view header.

How to do it...

You should use std::string_view to pass a parameter to a function (or return a value from a function), instead of std::string const...