C++ Cookbook

Preface

C++ runs on virtually every platform and in an infinite number of applications. If you bought or might buy this book, you are probably an engineer or researcher writing one of these applications. But regardless of what you are writing and what platform you are targeting, odds are that you will be re-solving many of the same problems that other C++ programmers have been solving for years. What we have done in this book is solve many of these common problems and explain each of the solutions.

Whether you have been programming in C++ for years or are relatively new to the language, you are probably familiar with the things you have rewrite on each new project: Date and time parsing/arithmetic, manipulating string and text, working with files, parsing XML, using the standard containers, and so on. These are the kinds of problems this book contains solutions for. In some cases (e.g., date and time arithmetic), the standard library contains very little support. In others (e.g., string manipulation) the standard library contains functionally rich classes, but it can’t do everything and some very common tasks are cumbersome.

The format is straightforward. Each recipe has a problem statement and a code solution, and most have a discussion that follows. We have tried to be pragmatic and solve the problems at hand without digressing too far, but in many cases there are related topics that are so useful (or just cool) that we have to provide a page or two of explanation.

This is a book about solving common problems with C++, but not a book about learning C++. We assume that you have at least a basic knowledge of C++ and object-oriented programming. In particular, it will be helpful if you have at least some familiarity with:

• C++ inheritance and virtual functions

• The standard library

• Components of the Standard Template Library (containers, iterators, and algorithms)

• Templates

These are not strict prerequisites for reading this book, but having at least a basic knowledge of them will help.