The C++ Source
Smart Pointers
A column by Bjorn Karlsson and Matthew Wilson

The column is now closed, because we retired the columns feature at Artima, but you can still read the articles published in this column by following the links on this page.

Smart Pointers is a column aimed at sharing knowledge with our peers—people who care about the quality of their work; who have an interest in learning new things; who know they don't know everything and are keen to learn more; who avoid unnecessary cleverness but who are willing to embrace necessary cleverness; who believe that C++ is not perfect but is very good; and who believe that discoverability, efficiency, robustness, minimal coupling, honesty and a good dose of humor are more important in effective software engineering than being the master of this year's bleeding-edge IDE. With each installment we aim to both stimulate the reader and add to their armory of practically applicable techniques, the intention being to make their working lives easier and more effective. (And we plan to learn a lot ourselves in the process.)

Pointers

Base-64 Encoding Lib
Boost
Imperfect C++
Open-RJ
Pantheios: The C++ Logging Library Sweetspot
recls
STLSoft
VOLE

Contract Programming 101

by Matthew Wilson, December 31, 2005 18 comments

This is Part One of a series that takes a slightly philosophical look at contract programming, considers the tradeoffs between information and safety in reacting to contract violations, looks at practical measures for shutting errant processes, and introduces a new technique for the implementation of unrecoverable exceptions in C++.

Stream Thy Strings

by Bjorn Karlsson and Matthew Wilson, May 28, 2005 2 comments

In this tutorial, Bjorn and Matthew show the proper use of std::stringstream, and extol the virtues of making your classes streamable.

Reducing Preprocessor Namespace Pollution

by Bjorn Karlsson and Matthew Wilson, November 6, 2004 9 comments

The authors look at the nasty habit that many popular APIs have of trampling roughshod over the global namespace (and all other namespaces) with the macro preprocessor, and demonstrate a simple technique to obviate it, and still be a good C++itizen.

The Law of The Big Two

by Bjorn Karlsson and Matthew Wilson, October 1, 2004 34 comments

In this inaugural installment of their new column, Smart Pointers, Bjorn Karlsson and Matthew Wilson update the well-known Law of The Big Three, explaining which one of those member functions is not always needed.

About the Columnists

Bjorn Karlsson is proud to be a C++ designer, programmer, teacher, preacher, and student. He has finally learned enough about C++ to realize how little he knows. When not reading or writing articles, books, or code, he has the privilege to be a part of the Boost community, and a member of The C++ Source Advisory Board. He is the author of Beyond the C++ Standard Library—An Introduction to Boost (Addison-Wesley, 2005). He appreciates it when people send him interesting emails at bjorn.karlsson at readsoft.com.

Matthew Wilson is a software development consultant, contributing editor for C/C++ User's Journal, and creator of the STLSoft (http://stlsoft.org/) and Pantheios (http://pantheios.org/) libraries. He is author of Imperfect C++ (Addison-Wesley, 2004) and Extended STL, volume 1 (Addison-Wesley, 2007), and is currently working on his next book, Breaking Up The Monolith, which will be published in 2008. Matthew's appetite for coding challenges is matched only by his appetite for chocolate; he keeps them in check by writing articles and riding his bike (not always at the same time). He can be contacted via http://imperfectcplusplus.com/.


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