C++ Coding Standards: 101 Rules, Guidelines, and Best Practices

Front Cover
Pearson Education, Oct 25, 2004 - Computers - 240 pages

Consistent, high-quality coding standards improve software quality, reduce time-to-market, promote teamwork, eliminate time wasted on inconsequential matters, and simplify maintenance. Now, two of the world's most respected C++ experts distill the rich collective experience of the global C++ community into a set of coding standards that every developer and development team can understand and use as a basis for their own coding standards.

The authors cover virtually every facet of C++ programming: design and coding style, functions, operators, class design, inheritance, construction/destruction, copying, assignment, namespaces, modules, templates, genericity, exceptions, STL containers and algorithms, and more. Each standard is described concisely, with practical examples. From type definition to error handling, this book presents C++ best practices, including some that have only recently been identified and standardized-techniques you may not know even if you've used C++ for years. Along the way, you'll find answers to questions like

  • What's worth standardizing--and what isn't?
  • What are the best ways to code for scalability?
  • What are the elements of a rational error handling policy?
  • How (and why) do you avoid unnecessary initialization, cyclic, and definitional dependencies?
  • When (and how) should you use static and dynamic polymorphism together?
  • How do you practice "safe" overriding?
  • When should you provide a no-fail swap?
  • Why and how should you prevent exceptions from propagating across module boundaries?
  • Why shouldn't you write namespace declarations or directives in a header file?
  • Why should you use STL vector and string instead of arrays?
  • How do you choose the right STL search or sort algorithm?
  • What rules should you follow to ensure type-safe code?

Whether you're working alone or with others, C++ Coding Standards will help you write cleaner code--and write it faster, with fewer hassles and less frustration.



 

Contents

Preface
Know what not to standardize
Compile cleanly at high warning levels
Use an automated build system
Use a version control system
Invest in code reviews
Design Style
Give one entity one cohesive responsibility
Dont pessimize prematurely
Minimize global and shared data
Hide information
Know when and how to code for concurrency
Ensure resources are owned by objects Use explicit RAII and smart pointers
Coding Style
Prefer compile and linktime errors to runtime errors
Use const proactively 16 Avoid macros

Correctness simplicity and clarity come first
Know when and how to code for scalability
Dont optimize prematurely
Avoid magic numbers
Declare variables as locally as possible

Other editions - View all

C++ Coding Standards: 101 Rules, Guidelines, and Best Practices
Sutter
No preview available

Common terms and phrases

Addison-Wesley Alan Perlis Alexandrescu algorithms allocate arguments arrays assert assignment operator Avoid base class Bjarne Stroustrup C-style C/C++ Users Journal C++ Standard C++ standard library caller calling code checking clients Cline99 coding standards compiler Consider container copy assignment copy constructor data members deallocation declarations default define delete dependencies derived class destructor Discussion document elements error codes error handling error-safe Examples Example exception handling exception specifications explicitly function objects function template header file idiom implementation initialization instantiated internal iterators Lakos96 lookup loops macros McConnell93 member function memory Meyers01 Meyers97 module namespace no-fail nonmember functions nonvirtual operator delete option overload override parameters performance point of customization polymorphism postconditions preconditions predicates Prefer premature optimization Public inheritance References Dewhurst03 reinterpret_cast run-time semantics smart pointers standard library static string Stroustrup00 Summary Sutter Sutter00 swap undefined behavior varargs vector virtual functions Widget

About the author (2004)

Herb Sutter is the author of three highly acclaimed books, Exceptional C++ Style, Exceptional C++, and More Exceptional C++ (Addison-Wesley). He chairs the ISO C++ standards committee, and is contributing editor and columnist for C/C++ Users Journal. As a software architect for Microsoft, Sutter leads the design of C++ language extensions for .NET programming.

Andrei Alexandrescu is the author of the award-winning book Modern C++ Design (Addison-Wesley, 2001) and is a columnist for C/C++ Users Journal.



Bibliographic information

TitleC++ Coding Standards: 101 Rules, Guidelines, and Best Practices
C++ In-Depth Series
AuthorsHerb Sutter, Andrei Alexandrescu
PublisherPearson Education, 2004
ISBN0132654423, 9780132654425
Length240 pages
Subjects ›  › 

Computers / Languages / C
  
Export CitationBiBTeX EndNote RefMan