Plain Pointers as Function Parameters
In many legacy code bases we encounter functions that get their parameters passed by plain pointers. Often those pointers are expected to be not null. In this post I am […]
C++
Uses of Inheritance
C++ is a multi-paradigm language, so it is not a purely object oriented language but has other aspects, for example a huge support for generic programming via templates. One of its major […]
The Rule of Zero revisited: The Rule of All or Nothing
In 2012, Martinho Fernandes coined the Rule of Zero in a blog post. In 2014, Scott Meyers wrote a blog post about a concern with that rule and proposed a Rule of Five Defaults. In this post I am going to wrap up my thoughts about the two posts and propose a “Rule of All or Nothing”.
Helper Classes Deserve Some Care, Too
I am going to tell you a story about an issue that brought me a rather painful debugging session, and the lessons that can be learned from it. A few […]
A Casting Show
In C++ there are two ways of type conversions: implicit and explicit type conversions. The latter are called type casts and they are what this post is about.
Don’t Try Too Hard! – Exception Handling
Among C++ developers there often appears to be a misconception about what it means to deal with code that can throw exceptions. The misconception is that the possibility of exceptions […]
Operator Overloading: Common Practice
In my last blog post I have told you about the basics of operator overloading, about the when and how, and which operators can be overloaded. In this post I […]
Operator Overloading: The Basics
Since I do not have much time this week I will translate and update the first of a small series of articles I have written for a German C++ forum […]
Heap allocation of local variables
In a few occasions I have seen functions that allocate certain local variables on the heap instead of using variables with automatic storage. In this post I explain what you should do with those variables.