Learning Modern Core Language Features

The C++ language has gone through a major transformation in the past decades with the development and release of C++11 and then, later, with its newer versions: C++14, C++17, C++20, and C++23. These new standards have introduced new concepts, simplified and extended existing syntax and semantics, and transformed the way we write code overall. C++11 looks and feels like a new language compared to what we previously knew, and code written using these new standards is called modern C++ code. This introductory chapter will touch on some of the language features introduced, starting with C++11, that help you with many coding routines. However, the core of the language expands way beyond the topics addressed in this chapter, and many other features are discussed in the other chapters of the book.

The recipes included in this chapter are as follows:

• Using auto whenever possible
• Creating type aliases and alias templates
• Understanding uniform initialization
• Understanding the various forms of non-static member initialization
• Controlling and querying object alignment
• Using scoped enumerations
• Using override and final for virtual methods
• Using range-based for loops to iterate on a range
• Enabling range-based for loops for custom types
• Using explicit constructors and conversion operators to avoid implicit conversion
• Using unnamed namespaces instead of static globals
• Using inline namespaces for symbol versioning
• Using structured bindings to handle multi-return values
• Simplifying code with class template argument deduction
• Using the subscript operator to access elements in a collection

Let’s start by learning about automatic type deduction.