In my last post I gave a little introduction to move semantics and a very brief description of rvalue references. This time I will cover two special functions that are based on those language features and are key to integrating them into each and every C++ program: The move constructor and move assignment operator.

One of the biggest changes in C++11 were the introduction of rvalue references to allow the implementation of move semantics. I will give an overview of the basic idea of move semantics, its related features and how to use them.

In my last post I have written about braced-or-equal-initializers for class members, a feature that enables simpler constructors through default values for members. Today’s post is about two related features that can simplify the writing of constructors even further.

One of the less discussed but nevertheless useful features in C++11 is the possibility to provide initializers for class members right in the class definition.