Imperfect C++ : Practical Solutions for Real-Life Programming

Imperfect C++, although a marvelous language, isn't perfect.

Matthew Wilson has been working with it for over a decade, and during that time he has found inherent limitations that require skillful workarounds.

In this book, he doesn't just tell you what's wrong with C++, but offers practical techniques and tools for writing code that's more robust, flexible, efficient, and maintainable.

He shows you how to tame C++'s complexity, cut through its vast array of paradigms, take back control over your code - and get far better results.

If you're a long-time C++ developer, this book will help you see your programming challenges in new ways - and illuminate powerful techniques you may never have tried.

If you're newer to C++, you'll learn principles that will make you more effective in all of your projects.Along the way, you'll learn how to: overcome deficiencies in C++'s type system; enforce software design through constraints, contracts, and assertions; handle behavior ignored by the standard - including issues related to dynamic libraries, static objects, and threading; achieve binary compatibility between dynamically loading components; understand the costs and disadvantages of implicit conversions - and the alternatives; increase compatibility with diverse compilers, libraries, and operating environments; and help your compiler detect more errors and work more effectively.

It also helps you how to: understand the aspects of style that impact reliability; apply the Resource Acquisition Is Initialization mechanism to a wide variety of problem domains; manage the sometimes arcane relationship between arrays and pointers; use template programming to improve flexibility and robustness; and Extend C++: including fast string concatenation, a true NULL-pointer, flexible memory buffers, properties, multidimensional arrays, and ranges.

The CD-ROM contains a valuable variety of C++ compilers, libraries, test programs, tools, and utilities, as well as the author's related journal articles.