Moving Up to Modern C++

Course Outline

C++ Timeline

Goals for C++11/14

Part I: The Simpler Core Language Features

• auto, decltype, trailing return type
• non-member begin/end (and variations)
• nullptr
• Generalized function return type deduction
• auto vs. decltype(auto)
• Range-based for loop
• >> in template specializations
• static_assert
• noexcept
• Initialization
  • Initializer lists
  • Uniform initialization
  • Prevention of narrowing
• extern template
• Variadic templates
• constexpr functions in C++11 and C++14
• constexpr data
• Template alias
• C++14 variable templates
• Unicode and raw string literals
• Inline namespaces
• Attributes
• Fixed-width integer types
• Scoped enums
• Generalized unions and PODs
• Other misc. features

Part II: Larger Language Features

• Lambdas
  • Capture modes
    • Avoid default capture modes (from EMC++)
  • Lambdas as "local functions"
  • C++14 generic lambdas
• Move semantics
  • The meanings of 'lvalue' and 'rvalue'
  • rvalue references
  • The move operations
  • Universal References
  • Reference collapsing
  • Perfect forwarding
    • Perfect forwarding failure cases (from EMC++)
  • The Rule of 5
  • C++14 generalized lambda capture

Part III: Features Specific to Class Design

• Generated functions: =default / =delete
• Override control: override / final
• Delegating constructors
• Inheriting constructors
• Increased flexibility for in-class initializers
• New rules for static data members
• Explicit conversion operators
• Reference-qualified member functions

Part IV: Concurrency

• Threads
  • Make std::threads unjoinable on all paths (from EMC++)
• Passing arguments to threads
• Data lifetime considerations
• Synchronization with mutexes and locking
• Acquiring multiple locks
• mutex types
• Returning values from threads using futures and async
• Launch policies
• Querying future status
  • Use launch::async policy when asynchronicity is essential (from EMC++)
• Condition variables
• Thread-local storage
• Atomics
• Consider void futures for one-shot event communications (from EMC++, optional)

Part V: New Library Components

• std::tuple
• Type Traits
  • Traits classes
  • Tag dispatch
  • Type predicates and transformations
  • SFINAE
  • std::enable_if
• New Function/Function Object Facilities
  • std::function
  • std::bind
• Smart Pointers
  • std::unique_ptr
  • std::shared_ptr
  • std::make_shared/std::make_unique
• Fixed-length Array
  • std::array
• Hash-based Containers
  • std::unordered_*
• Performance enhancements

Online Resources