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
Other Books You May Enjoy
14
Index

Performing correct type casts

It is often the case that data has to be converted from one type into another type. Some conversions are necessary at compile time (such as double to int); others are necessary at runtime (such as upcasting and downcasting pointers to the classes in a hierarchy). The language supports compatibility with the C casting style in either the (type)expression or type(expression) form. However, this type of casting breaks the type safety of C++.

Therefore, the language also provides several conversions: static_cast, dynamic_cast, const_cast, and reinterpret_cast. They are used to better indicate intent and write safer code. In this recipe, we’ll look at how these casts can be used.

How to do it...

Use the following casts to perform type conversions:

  • Use static_cast to perform type casting of non-polymorphic types, including the casting of integers to enumerations, from floating-point to integral values, or from a pointer type to...