Book Image

The C++ Workshop

By : Dale Green, Kurt Guntheroth, Shaun Ross Mitchell
Book Image

The C++ Workshop

By: Dale Green, Kurt Guntheroth, Shaun Ross Mitchell

Overview of this book

C++ is the backbone of many games, GUI-based applications, and operating systems. Learning C++ effectively is more than a matter of simply reading through theory, as the real challenge is understanding the fundamentals in depth and being able to use them in the real world. If you're looking to learn C++ programming efficiently, this Workshop is a comprehensive guide that covers all the core features of C++ and how to apply them. It will help you take the next big step toward writing efficient, reliable C++ programs. The C++ Workshop begins by explaining the basic structure of a C++ application, showing you how to write and run your first program to understand data types, operators, variables and the flow of control structures. You'll also see how to make smarter decisions when it comes to using storage space by declaring dynamic variables during program runtime. Moving ahead, you'll use object-oriented programming (OOP) techniques such as inheritance, polymorphism, and class hierarchies to make your code structure organized and efficient. Finally, you'll use the C++ standard library?s built-in functions and templates to speed up different programming tasks. By the end of this C++ book, you will have the knowledge and skills to confidently tackle your own ambitious projects and advance your career as a C++ developer.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)

Introduction

In the previous chapters, OOP was introduced, along with examples and use cases. Classes and best practices for creating them were covered in detail. In this chapter, we are going to look at another powerful feature of OOP—templates.

Templates allow the reuse of code for different data types. An example of the use of templates is the C++ standard template library (or STL). This library is a set of template classes that provide generic containers and algorithms. The library can be used with any data type, and this is achieved using template functions and classes. In this chapter, we will cover the creation of template classes and template functions to allow the creation of reusable code.

Specifically, we will be describing the following topics: template classes, template functions, and template specialization.

At its core, a template is a form of generic programming. It allows us to reuse a set of functionality, without that functionality needing to be specific...