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

Using unique_ptr to uniquely own a memory resource

Manual handling of heap memory allocation and releasing it (with new and delete) is one of the most controversial features of C++. All allocations must be properly paired with a corresponding delete operation in the correct scope. If the memory allocation is done in a function and needs to be released before the function returns, for instance, then this has to happen on all the return paths, including the abnormal situation where a function returns because of an exception. C++11 features, such as rvalues and move semantics, have enabled the development of better smart pointers (since some, such as auto_ptr, existed prior to C++11); these pointers can manage a memory resource and automatically release it when the smart pointer is destroyed. In this recipe, we will look at std::unique_ptr, a smart pointer that owns and manages another object or an array of objects allocated on the heap, and performs the disposal operation when the smart...