Book Image

Hands-On Design Patterns with C++ (Second Edition) - Second Edition

By : Fedor G. Pikus
5 (1)
Book Image

Hands-On Design Patterns with C++ (Second Edition) - Second Edition

5 (1)
By: Fedor G. Pikus

Overview of this book

C++ is a general-purpose programming language designed for efficiency, performance, and flexibility. 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. This book helps you focus on the design patterns that naturally adapt to your needs, and on the patterns that uniquely benefit from the features of C++. Armed with the knowledge of these patterns, you’ll spend less time searching for solutions to common problems and tackle challenges with the solutions developed from experience. You’ll also explore that design patterns are a concise and efficient way to communicate, as patterns are a familiar and recognizable solution to a specific problem and can convey a considerable amount of information with a single line of code. By the end of this book, you’ll have a deep understanding of how to use design patterns to write maintainable, robust, and reusable software.
Table of Contents (26 chapters)
1
Part 1: Getting Started with C++ Features and Concepts
5
Part 2: Common C++ Idioms
10
Part 3: C++ Design Patterns
18
Part 4: Advanced C++ Design Patterns

Summary

In this chapter, we have reviewed a classic object-oriented design pattern, the Template Method, as it applies to C++ programs. This pattern works in C++ as well as in any other object-oriented language, but C++ also has its own flavor of the Template Method—the non-virtual interface idiom. The advantages of this design pattern lead to a rather broad guideline—make all virtual functions private or protected. Be mindful, however, of the specifics of the destructors with regard to polymorphism. Here are the general guidelines for access (public vs private) to virtual functions:

  1. Prefer to make interfaces nonvirtual, using the Template Method design pattern
  2. Prefer to make virtual functions private
  3. Only if derived classes need to invoke the base implementation of a virtual function, make the virtual function protected.
  4. A base class destructor should be either public and virtual (if objects are deleted through the base class pointer) or protected...