Ubiquitous use of smart pointers can prevent memory leaks and make for much easier to read and understand code. Unfortunately, as with most things C++, there are some caveats you need to be aware of otherwise your attempts to write robust code could very well come back to bite you. This little quiz shows how careless misuse of auto_ptr could open up a big can of worms.
Month: December 2012
The dangers of iterators
When working with STL containers we generally use iterators to access, manipulate and enumerate the contents. This almost becomes second nature and it’s very easy to go on auto-pilot and end up coding an innocuous looking bit of code that can contain a rather nasty surprise. This little quiz shows just one example of how such a surprise might come back to bite you.
How to add properties to standard C++ classes
One feature missing from standard C++ that you will find in many other Object Oriented Programming languages is something called a Property. These are like data members except they can have preconditions imposed on them prior to getting or setting their value.
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IRC (Internet Relay Chat) for absolute beginners
Introduction
This article is aimed at someone who has never used IRC before. It covers the very basics of setting up and configuring a client and a little bit about starting a channel and the basics of being a channel operator. What it doesn’t do is review or promote any of the various IRC clients available. Nor does it cover power users; however, suitable reference material is suggested at the end for eager readers.
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The Gentleman’s Guide To Complaining
Complaining. It’s easy right? Anyone can do it. You just raise your voice and talk loudly, or maybe even shout at the object of your frustration until your problem gets sorted. If that is all it takes, then that’s it, end of article. Wow, that was easy!
Definition or a declaration?
The C++ language is a context sensitive language, which means a compiler cannot always decide the semantics of a line of code in isolation. Sometimes, though, it is impossible for the compiler to make up it’s mind so it just guesses. Yup, that’s right, it guesses. To find out more try this little quiz.
Order of initialization
In general, it’s pretty obvious what order the compiler will initialize variables: it’s the order in which they appear in the translation unit. What happens, though, when you have a global variable in one translation unit depending on the the initialization of a global variable in another translation unit? This little quiz explores just that.
When simple arithmetic isn’t so simple!
What could be as simple as incrementing a variable by one? Ignoring overflow, what else could possibly go wrong? As it turns out, quite a lot as this little quiz demonstrates.
The dangers of casting pointers
There are various dangers when casting pointers to different types but as a general rule, casting to a void pointer and back to the original pointer is considered safe. Unfortunately, this is not always the case as this little quiz demonstrates.
String literals and pointers
Do you know how to access c-style literal strings? Try this two-part quiz and see if you are able to unravel the different semantics of character pointers and arrays.
evilrix 