Book Image

Modern C++ Programming Cookbook - Third Edition

By : Marius Bancila
Book Image

Modern C++ Programming Cookbook - Third Edition

By: Marius Bancila

Overview of this book

The updated third edition of Modern C++ Programming Cookbook addresses the latest features of C++23, such as the stack library, the expected and mdspan types, span buffers, formatting library improvements, and updates to the ranges library. It also gets into more C++20 topics not previously covered, such as sync output streams and source_location. The book is organized in the form of practical recipes covering a wide range of real-world problems. It gets into the details of all the core concepts of 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. You will cover the performance aspects of programming in depth, and learning to write fast and lean code with the help of best practices. You will explore useful patterns and the implementation of many idioms, including pimpl, named parameter, attorney-client, and the factory pattern. A chapter dedicated to unit testing introduces you to three of the most widely used libraries for C++: Boost.Test, Google Test, and Catch2. By the end of this modern C++ programming book, you will be able to effectively leverage the features and techniques of C++11/14/17/20/23 programming to enhance the performance, scalability, and efficiency of your applications.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
13
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14
Index

Creating compile-time constant expressions

The possibility to evaluate expressions at compile time improves runtime execution because there is less code to run and the compiler can perform additional optimizations. Compile-time constants can be not only literals (such as a number or string), but also the result of a function’s execution. If all the input values of a function (regardless of whether they are arguments, locals, or global variables) are known at compile time, the compiler can execute the function and have the result available at compile time. This is what generalized the constant expressions that were introduced in C++11, which were relaxed in C++14 and even further in C++20. The keyword constexpr (short for constant expression) can be used to declare compile-time constant objects and functions. We have seen this in several examples in the previous chapters. Now, it’s time to learn how it actually works.

Getting ready

The way generalized constant...