How to store a variable number of objects known at compile time? This is a question that Fluent C++ reader John Koniarik sent in to me by email. Here was his exact problem, reproduced with his permission: I would like to efficiently store n-dimensional simplexes. I have defined Simplex< unsigned n > as key data […]
C++11’s feature auto has changed the looks of C++ code. In a lot of cases, auto alleviates code from burdening information, and using it does make code simpler. So much so that using auto becomes a second nature to make code more expressive. Should we use auto always? According to Herb Sutter guideline for C++11, yes, almost […]
For loops have evolved over the years, starting from the C-style iterations to reach the range-based for loops introduced in C++11. But the later, modern, versions of the for loop have lost a feature along the way: the possibility to access the index of the current element in the loop. Indeed, consider this rather […]
Here is a new episode in the series of word counting! Today we will focus on computing the span words in code. As a reminder, word counting consists in counting the occurrences of every term in a piece of code (for example, in a function), and sorting the results by most frequent words. This can reveal […]
In our first step implementing a word counter in C++, we wrote code that could extract the words inside of a piece of code. In the second step, we changed that code so that it extracted individual words inside of camelCaseSymbols (and also of PascalCaseSymbols), losing the previous feature of counting entire words. Today, we […]
Counting words in code, what an exciting topic! Ok, if you don’t see what exactly is exciting in counting words in code, maybe a little context will help. Word counts can reveal useful information about a piece of code, and with the right tooling, it takes very little time to perform. Reading code is one […]
Word counts can reveal information about your code, or make an unknown piece of code more expressive to your eyes. There are online tools to count words in generic text, but most of those I’ve come across are designed around counting words in text and SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Since analysing source code is not the […]
Being able to read code and understand it quickly is an invaluable skill for a software developer. We spend way more time reading code that writing it, and being able to make a piece of code expressive to your eyes can make you much more efficient in your daily work. There is a technique to […]
An object of type optional<T> can take every value that T can take, plus one. This extra value represents an object that is “null” (or “empty” or “not set”, formulate it as you will). And we’ve already seen how optionals can make your interfaces clearer. The aspect I’d like to dig in deeper today is the particular […]
In C++, one can manipulate objects directly or via something else, which is commonly called a handle. At the beginning of C++, handles could be pointers, references and iterators. Modern C++ brought in reference wrappers, and boost introduced optional references. The fact that a given piece of code chooses to use one particular handle expresses something. For this […]
