C++20 Ranges, Projections, std::invoke and if constexpr

Continuing the topic from last week, let’s dive into the topic of std::invoke. This helper template function helps with uniform syntax call for various callable object types and can greatly reduce the complexity of our generic code.

17 Smaller but Handy C++17 Features

When you see an article about new C++ features, most of the time you’ll have a description of major elements. Looking at C++17, there are a lot of posts (including articles from this blog) about structured bindings, filesystem, parallel algorithms, if constexpr, std::optional, std::variant… and other prominent C++17 additions.

But how about some smaller parts? Library or language improvements that didn’t require decades to standardise or violent “battles” at the ISO meetings.

In this article, I’ll show you 17 (plus a few extra!) smaller C++17 things that will improve your code.

Increased Complexity of C++20 Range Algorithms Declarations - Is It Worth?

With the addition of Ranges and Concepts in C++20, our good old algorithm interfaces got super long “rangified” versions. For example, copy is now 4 lines long… and it’s just the declaration!

template <ranges::input_range R, std::weakly_incrementable O>
requires std::indirectly_copyable<ranges::iterator_t<R>, O>
constexpr ranges::copy_result<ranges::borrowed_iterator_t<R>, O>
copy(R&& r, O result);

How to decipher such a long declaration? What benefits do we get instead? Is it worth it? Let’s find out.

How To Stay Sane with Modern C++

C++ grows very fast! For example, the number of pages of the C++ standard went from 879 pages for C++98/03 to 1834 for C++20! Nearly 1000 pages! What’s more, with each revision of C++, we get several dozens of new features. Have a look at my blog post with all C++17 features, it shows 48 items, and my C++20 reference card lists 47 elements!

Do you need to learn all of that stuff to write good code?

How to stay sane in the C++ world today?

How to Pass a Variadic Pack as the First Argument of a Function in C++

Variadic templates and argument packs which are available since C++11 give flexibility in situations when you don’t know the number of inputs upfront. However, they are limited and can only appear at the end of the type sequence.

Have a look at today’s blog post from Jonathan Boccara, who describes a technique that might improve this situation. We’ll also look into the future.

How I Improved My Legacy C++ Project with PVS-Studio

Since a few months, I’ve been refactoring my old C++/OpenGL project. Thus far, I used compilers (MSVC and Clang), my knowledge or free tools. At some point, I also got a chance to leverage a solid static analysis tool - PVS-Studio. The tool helped me with identifying 8 critical issues not to mention good code style and performance enhancements (in total 137 warnings)

Read on to see my report.

Replacing unique_ptr with C++17's std::variant a Practical Experiment

Some time ago I wrote about a new way to implement runtime polymorphism which is based not on virtual functions but on std::visit and std::variant. Please have a look at this new blog post where I experiment with this approach on my home project. The experiment is more practical than artificial examples.

See advantages, disadvantages and practical code issues.

6 Efficient Things You Can Do to Refactor a C++ Project

I took my old pet project from 2006, experimented, refactored it and made it more "modern C++". Here are my lessons and six practical steps that you can apply in your projects.

Let’s start

C++17: Polymorphic Allocators, Debug Resources and Custom Types

In my previous article on polymorphic allocators, we discussed some basic ideas. For example, you’ve seen a pmr::vector that holds pmr::string using a monotonic resource. How about using a custom type in such a container? How to enable it? Let’s see.

How to Check String or String View Prefixes and Suffixes in C++20

Up to (and including) C++17 if you wanted to check the start or the end in a string you have to use custom solutions, boost or other third-party libraries. Fortunately, this changes with C++20.

See the article where I’ll show you the new functionalities and discuss a couple of examples.

C++ Lambda Week: Some Tricks

We’re on the last day of the lambda week. We have all the essential knowledge, and now we can learn some tricks!

C++ Lambda Week: Going Generic

We’re in the third day of the lambda week. So far, you’ve learned basic syntax and how to capture things. Another important aspect is that lambdas can also be used in the “generic” scenarios. This is especially possible since C++14 where we got generic lambdas (auto arguments), and then in C++20, you can even specify a template lambda!

C++ Lambda Week: Capturing Things

We’re in the second day of the lambda week. Today you’ll learn about the options you have when you want to capture things from the external scope. Local variables, global, static, variadic packs, this pointer… what’s possible and what’s not?

Lambda Week: Syntax changes, C++11 to C++20

Let’s start the week with Lambda Expressions. The plan is to have a set of concise articles presenting core elements of lambda expressions. Today you can see how the syntax has evolved since C++11 and what the latest changes in C++20 are.