EmptyCrate blogs

C++11: Auto

jason — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 00:45:43 +0000

We've already covered C++11 decltype and why you should start using C++11 features today. Now we will move on to one of the most widely supported C++11 features: the new auto keyword.

auto is supported currently by g++ as of 4.4, clang and msvc since 10. So you are safe using it today if you don't need to support any older compilers.

Are You Using make_shared Yet?

jason — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 16:46:55 +0000

Recently, while watching the GoingNative conference, I learned about the new std::shared_ptr helper function std::make_shared. In the talk Stephan T. Lavavej discusses the performance improvements they've made. It seems std::make_shared can save a few extra allocations and a bit of memory overhead. This can be significant if you dynamically create lots of objects.

Using Non-Standard Resolutions with VirtualBox RDP

jason — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 19:52:51 +0000

I like to connect to Virtual Box guest operating systems remotely over RDP connections. This generally works well except if I connect from my 1280x720 laptop to a Windows guest. In this case the Windows guest will tend to resize to a "standard" resolution that fits inside of the 1280x720, which is 800x600. This can be rather obnoxious.

Trigraphs, Digraphs and Alternative Tokens

jason — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 15:29:41 +0000

Quick, which language is the following code written in?

%:include <iostream>
 
int main(int, char *argv<:??))
<%
  int i = 0;
  int j = 0;
 
  for (; i < 10 and j < 11; ++i, ++j) ??< 
    std::cout << not (i bitand j) << std::endl;
  %>
??>

If you guessed standard C++, you'd be correct. C and C++ support a set of alternative tokens and character sequences to account for languages and keyboards that do not have easy access to characters that those of us with US keyboards consider to be normal.

Trigraph Sequences

Start Using C++11 Now

jason — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 04:47:45 +0000

Every major platform and compiler now supports some aspect of the new C++ standard accepted in 2011. This means it is currently possible to write code that uses some of C++11 while maintaining cross-platform compatibility.

Why should you care?

By enabling C++11 compatibility with your compiler you are future proofing your code. You will be able to catch any portability errors sooner and be ready for the full move.

Double vs. Float, Which is Better?

jason — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 15:16:28 +0000

Neither C++ Coding Standards nor Effective C++ addresses the question of which float point type is best to use and in what situations.

There are three floating point types in C and C++:

float
double
long double

What the Standard Has to Say

There are exactly two guarantees provided by the standard:

C++11: Decltype

jason — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 11:00:00 +0000

decltype is a type specifier introduced in C++11. It behaves like a function that evaluates to the type of an object at compile time. This article is helping provide some more background information necessary for the more meatier C++11 articles to come.

decltype(4.23 * 5) v = 4.23*5;

In this example, the compiler is determining for us what the type of 4.23 * 5 would be and then giving that type to v.

With some help from typeid we can see that the type assigned by the compiler is double.

C++ Partial Specialization of Templates

jason — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 12:26:03 +0000

In this article we are going to introduce the concept of C++ Template Partial Specialization. This is meant to be just a primer on the topic and not exhaustive. The examples here will be used and referenced in later articles. A series of discussions about C++11, now that the language has been finalized, will be coming shortly.

In C++ a template class such as this:

template<typename LHS, typename RHS>
struct Add_With_Magic
{
  static int go(const LHS &t_lhs, const RHS &t_rhs)
  {

Nobody Understands C++: Part 11: Including Me (aka, Provide Consistent Semantics)

jason — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 03:11:10 +0000

I just spent the better part of the day debugging an insidious little bug. It really shouldn't have taken that long... I even had unit tests in place that covered the code in question! Right!?

The fact is, C++ is a complex language and getting every detail right all the time can be hard. In this case I had a simple class with a boost::shared_ptr in it. In the copy constructor I wanted to clone the pointed to object, but needed to keep the pointer for other house keeping reasons.

class MyClass
{
public:
  MyClass(const MyClass &t_other)

Retro Sierra Gaming

jason — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 02:42:47 +0000

If you're a fan of retro gaming in general and Sierra adventure games specifically, like I am, you might appreciate the following. I purchased the Quest for Glory Anthology (I - IV) and Quest for Glory V around 1998, when they were new. The Quest for Glory series is one of the few adventure games with RPG elements which allows you to create a character in one game and carry it forward from game to game. For the past 12 years I've been intending to play start to finish through all 5 games.