Functions often depend on particular behavioral characteristics (“features”) of code they invoke. For example, thread-safe code must invoke only thread-safe code if it is to remain thread-safe, and exception-safe code must invoke only exception-safe code. This paper describes a technique that enables the specification of arbitrary combinations of user-defined code features on a per-function basis and that detects violations of feature constraints during compilation. The technique applies to member functions (both nonvirtual and virtual), non-member functions, and function templates; operators are excluded.

Rvalue references is a small technical extension to the C++ language. Rvalue references allow programmers to avoid logically unnecessary copying and to provide perfect forwarding functions. They are primarily meant to aid in the design of higher performance and more robust libraries.

Computers make life easier because they're so fast, right? Well, yes and no. Do you write efficient code? The author reveals some disconcerting inefficiencies lurking in commonly used software and development practices.

The author discusses how the use of generic programming in C++ can lead to conflicts with object-oriented design principles. He demonstrates how a technique known as type erasure can often be used to resolve these conflicts. An in-depth example is presented: any_iterator, a type-safe, heterogeneous C++ iterator.

The need to write efficient and high-performance programs in C++ make it desirable to be able to manipulate bits and groups of bits easily, efficiently, and safely. C++ provides out-of-the-box tools to accomplish the first two goals with its bitwise operations, but it does so at the expense of the third objective, safety. This article presents a solution to the problem of constraining bit operations to allow only safe and legitimate ones, and turn all invalid bit manipulations into compile-time errors. Best of all, the syntax of bit operations remains unchanged, and the code working with bits does not need to be modified, except possibly to fix errors that had as yet remained undetected.

Have your cake and eat it, too, with STL extensions. In this chapter extract from his latest book, Matthew Wilson shows you how to take full advantage of the STL Iterator abstraction, without sacrificing block-transfer efficiency of Scatter/Gather I/O memory.

Object factories provide a useful abstraction for object construction. A special problem with object factories must be considered, however, when subscribing template classes with object factories. This article presents an overview of the "subscription problem" along with several solutions.

This article is a personal, behind-the-scenes look at BoostCon'07 from a veteran who has seen it all.

This article presents a flexible and efficient variation of the Visitor design pattern in C++ that accommodates arbitrary argument and return types.

Couldn’t make it to BoostCon ’07, the inaugural annual Boost Conference? Here’s the next best thing—a lively trip report from one of its presenters.

XML processing has become a common task that many C++ application developers have to deal with. Using low-level XML access APIs such as DOM and SAX is tedious and error-prone, especially for large XML vocabularies. XML Data Binding is a new alternative which automates much of the task by presenting the information stored in XML as a statically-typed, vocabulary-specific object model. This article introduces XML Data Binding and shows how it can simplify XML processing in C++.

"Pure virtual function called" is the dying message of the occasional crashed C++ program. What does it mean? You can find a couple of simple, well-documented explanations out there that apply to problems easy to diagnose during postmortem debugging. There is also another rather subtle bug that generates the same message. If you have a mysterious crash associated with that message, it might well mean your program went indirect on a dangling pointer. This article covers all these explanations.

The C++ standardization committee is hard at work standardizing threads for the next version of C++. Some members recently met to discuss the issues, and The C++ Source was there. Read on to learn what the world’s leading experts on concurrency are planning for C++0x.

This article investigates the complexity guarantees made by the C++ Standard Library. By analyzing and measuring the performance of alternative solutions to the same problem it shows how this library allows us to write code that is both simple and efficient.

In this article, Scott Meyers shares his picks for the five most meaningful Aha! moments in his involvement with C++, along with why he chose them.