Effective C++: 55 Specific Ways to Improve Your Programs and Designs, 3rd Edition

Product Author Bios

Scott Meyers is one of the world's foremost authorities on C++, providing training and consulting services to clients worldwide. He is the author of the best-selling Effective C++ series of books (Effective C++, More Effective C++, and Effective STL) and of the innovative Effective C++ CD. He is consulting editor for Addison Wesley's Effective Software Development Series and is a founding member of the Advisory Board for The C++ Source (http://www.artima.com/cppsource). He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Brown University. His web site is http://www.aristeia.com.

“Every C++ professional needs a copy of Effective C++. It is an absolute must-read for anyone thinking of doing serious C++ development. If you’ve never read Effective C++ and you think you know everything about C++, think again.”
— Steve Schirripa, Software Engineer, Google

“C++ and the C++ community have grown up in the last fifteen years, and the third edition of Effective C++ reflects this. The clear and precise style of the book is evidence of Scott’s deep insight and distinctive ability to impart knowledge.”
— Gerhard Kreuzer, Research and Development Engineer, Siemens AG

The first two editions of Effective C++ were embraced by hundreds of thousands of programmers worldwide. The reason is clear: Scott Meyers’ practical approach to C++ describes the rules of thumb used by the experts — the things they almost always do or almost always avoid doing — to produce clear, correct, efficient code.

The book is organized around 55 specific guidelines, each of which describes a way to write better C++. Each is backed by concrete examples. For this third edition, more than half the content is new, including added chapters on managing resources and using templates. Topics from the second edition have been extensively revised to reflect modern design considerations, including exceptions, design patterns, and multithreading.

Important features of Effective C++ include:

• Expert guidance on the design of effective classes, functions, templates, and inheritance hierarchies.
• Applications of new “TR1” standard library functionality, along with comparisons to existing standard library components.
• Insights into differences between C++ and other languages (e.g., Java, C#, C) that help developers from those languages assimilate “the C++ way” of doing things.

Items

Download the sample items from the Effective C++, Third Edition

Item 9: Never call virtual functions during construction or destruction

Item 27: Minimize casting

Item 47: Use Use traits classes for information about types

Customer Reviews

51 of 53 people found the following review helpful Third Edition: Improving an already great book, May 27, 2005 By  ART SEDIGHI (Old Bethpage, NY United States) - See all my reviews This review is from: Effective C++: 55 Specific Ways to Improve Your Programs and Designs (3rd Edition) (Paperback) How do you improve a book that has been known as a "bible" in the C++ community for years? As Scott mentions at the beginning of the text, he almost threw everything out, and started from scratch. When I first say the book, I thought that there are five new items that were added to the book, but I couldn't be more wrong. As you might have guessed, C++ has gone thru a number of significant changes over the past decade, and the third edition of this book is updated to take advantage of the new editions to the C++ standard. In reality, almost every item in this book has gone thru a re-write. Many have been consolidated and new chapters, topics and many new items have been added. A few items that did not make sense anymore like items 2, 3 and 4 in the second edition are removed from this third edition. Scott breaks down the c++ language into 4 subparts: * The old C subsystem. Before all these advanced programming languages such as Java and .NET came, C was the... Read more Help other customers find the most helpful reviews  Was this review helpful to you?  Report abuse | Permalink  Comment 55 of 59 people found the following review helpful Great book but Kindle edition doesn't cut it, March 8, 2009 By  C. S. Jones (Portland, OR USA) - See all my reviews    Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?) This review is from: Effective C++: 55 Specific Ways to Improve Your Programs and Designs (3rd Edition) (Kindle Edition) I really wanted to purchase this book for my Kindle 2 so I could reference it wherever I go. Unfortunately, the conversion to Kindle format made it much more difficult to read, mostly due to the fact that the code samples do not format correctly on the device. I imagine that the book needs to be re-converted to make use of the fixed-width font capabilities that are present in the newer Kindle software. Until they fix the formatting for Kindle, the print version is the only one I would recommend. Help other customers find the most helpful reviews  Was this review helpful to you?  Report abuse | Permalink  Comments (6) 23 of 24 people found the following review helpful Age brings wisdom..., June 15, 2005 By  Allan Clarke (Austin, TX) - See all my reviews    This review is from: Effective C++: 55 Specific Ways to Improve Your Programs and Designs (3rd Edition) (Paperback) "Effective C++: 55 Specific Ways to Improve Your Programs and Designs" recently came out in its 3rd edition. The first came out in 1991, making this line of book revisions positively ancient in high tech terms. But you should consider the elapsed 14 years an investment in wisdom, not obsolescence. Unlike the 2nd edition, this is a complete rewrite from the ground up. More than that, Scott Meyers begins from first principles, reevaluating what topics are most important to the programmers of 2005. This was a very strategic and insightful move. Not only has the language evolved over that time, but the audience has too. In the first edition, the likely readers were coming from languages like C. Now the likely readers cross over from some other object-orient language, like Java or C#. Keep in mind that the author focuses strictly on standard C++; he does not address anything that is platform-specific. Like its predecessors, the items can be read... Read more Help other customers find the most helpful reviews  Was this review helpful to you?  Report abuse | Permalink  Comment

Share your thoughts with other customers:

› See all 69 customer reviews...

Praise For Effective C++: 55 Specific Ways to Improve Your Programs and Designs, 3rd Edition

Read what is being said about Effective C++, Third Edition

Download the praise page

Online Sample Chapters

Item 27: Minimize casting

Item 47: Use traits classes for information about types

Item 9: Never call virtual functions during construction or destruction

Table of Contents

Preface  xv

Acknowledgments  xvii

Introduction  1

Chapter 1: Accustoming Yourself to C++  11

Item 1: View C++ as a federation of languages.  11

Item 2: Prefer consts, enums, and inlines to #defines.  13

Item 3: Use const whenever possible.  17

Item 4: Make sure that objects are initialized before they’re used.  26

Chapter 2: Constructors, Destructors, and Assignment Operators  34

Item 5: Know what functions C++ silently writes and calls.  34

Item 6: Explicitly disallow the use of compiler-generated functions you do not want.  37

Item 7: Declare destructors virtual in polymorphic base classes.  40

Item 8: Prevent exceptions from leaving destructors.  44

Item 9: Never call virtual functions during construction or destruction.  48

Item 10: Have assignment operators return a reference to *this.  52

Item 11: Handle assignment to self in operator=.  53

Item 12: Copy all parts of an object.  57

Chapter 3: Resource Management  61

Item 13: Use objects to manage resources.  61

Item 14: Think carefully about copying behavior in resource-managing classes.  66

Item 15: Provide access to raw resources in resource-managing classes.  69

Item 16: Use the same form in corresponding uses of new and delete.  73

Item 17: Store newed objects in smart pointers in standalone statements.  75

Chapter 4: Designs and Declarations  78

Item 18: Make interfaces easy to use correctly and hard to use incorrectly.  78

Item 19: Treat class design as type design.  84

Item 20: Prefer pass-by-reference-to-const to pass-by-value.  86

Item 21: Don’t try to return a reference when you must return an object.  90

Item 22: Declare data members private.  94

Item 23: Prefer non-member non-friend functions to member functions.  98

Item 24: Declare non-member functions when type conversions should apply to all parameters. 102

Item 25: Consider support for a non-throwing swap.  106

Chapter 5: Implementations  113

Item 26: Postpone variable definitions as long as possible.  113

Item 27: Minimize casting.  116

Item 28: Avoid returning “handles” to object internals.  123

Item 29: Strive for exception-safe code.  127

Item 30: Understand the ins and outs of inlining.  134

Item 31: Minimize compilation dependencies between files.  140

Chapter 6: Inheritance and Object-Oriented Design  149

Item 32: Make sure public inheritance models “is-a.”  150

Item 33: Avoid hiding inherited names.  156

Item 34: Differentiate between inheritance of interface and inheritance of implementation.  161

Item 35: Consider alternatives to virtual functions.  169

Item 36: Never redefine an inherited non-virtual function.  178

Item 37: Never redefine a function’s inherited default parameter value.  180

Item 38: Model “has-a” or “is-implemented-in-terms-of” through composition.  184

Item 39: Use private inheritance judiciously.  187

Item 40: Use multiple inheritance judiciously.  192

Chapter 7: Templates and Generic Programming  199

Item 41: Understand implicit interfaces and compile-time polymorphism.  199

Item 42: Understand the two meanings of typename.  203

Item 43: Know how to access names in templatized base classes.  207

Item 44: Factor parameter-independent code out of templates.  212

Item 45: Use member function templates to accept “all compatible types.”  218

Item 46: Define non-member functions inside templates when type conversions are desired.  222

Item 47: Use traits classes for information about types.  226

Item 48: Be aware of template metaprogramming.  233

Chapter 8: Customizing new and delete  239

Item 49: Understand the behavior of the new-handler.  240

Item 50: Understand when it makes sense to replace new and delete.  247

Item 51: Adhere to convention when writing new and delete.  252

Item 52: Write placement delete if you write placement new.  256

Chapter 9: Miscellany  262

Item 53: Pay attention to compiler warnings.  262

Item 54: Familiarize yourself with the standard library, including TR1.  263

Item 55: Familiarize yourself with Boost.  269

Appendix A: Beyond Effective C++  273

Appendix B: Item Mappings Between Second and Third Editions  277

Index  280

Preface

I wrote the original edition of Effective C++ in 1991. When the time came for a second edition in 1997, I updated the material in important ways, but, because I didn't want to confuse readers familiar with the first edition, I did my best to retain the existing structure: 48 of the original 50 Item titles remained essentially unchanged. If the book were a house, the second edition was the equivalent of freshening things up by replacing carpets, paint, and light fixtures.

For the third edition, I tore the place down to the studs. (There were times I wished I'd gone all the way to the foundation.) The world of C++ has undergone enormous change since 1991, and the goal of this book — to identify the most important C++ programming guidelines in a small, readable package — was no longer served by the Items I'd established nearly 15 years earlier. In 1991, it was reasonable to assume that C++ programmers came from a C background. Now, programmers moving to C++ are just as likely to come from Java or C#. In 1991, inheritance and object-oriented programming were new to most programmers. Now they're well-established concepts, and exceptions, templates, and generic programming are the areas where people need more guidance. In 1991, nobody had heard of design patterns. Now it's hard to discuss software systems without referring to them. In 1991, work had just begun on a formal standard for C++. Now that standard is eight years old, and work has begun on the next version.

To address these changes, I wiped the slate as clean as I could and asked myself, “What are the most important pieces of advice for practicing C++ programmers in 2005?” The result is the set of Items in this new edition. The book has new chapters on resource management and on programming with templates. In fact, template concerns are woven throughout the text, because they affect almost everything in C++. The book also includes new material on programming in the presence of exceptions, on applying design patterns, and on using the new TR1 library facilities. (TR1 is described in Item54.) It acknowledges that techniques and approaches that work well in single-threaded systems may not be appropriate in multithreaded systems. Well over half the material in the book is new. However, most of the fundamental information in the second edition continues to be important, so I found a way to retain it in one form or another. (You'll find a mapping between the second and third edition Items in Appendix B.)

I've worked hard to make this book as good as I can, but I have no illusions that it's perfect. If you feel that some of the Items in this book are inappropriate as general advice; that there is a better way to accomplish a task examined in the book; or that one or more of the technical discussions is unclear, incomplete, or misleading, please tell me. If you find an error of any kind — technical, grammatical, typographical, whatever — please tell me that, too. I'll gladly add to the acknowledgments in later printings the name of the first person to bring each problem to my attention.

Even with the number of Items expanded to 55, the set of guidelines in this book is far from exhaustive. But coming up with good rules — ones that apply to almost all applications almost all the time — is harder than it might seem. If you have suggestions for additional guidelines, I would be delighted to hear about them.

I maintain a list of changes to this book since its first printing, including bug fixes, clarifications, and technical updates. The list is available at the Effective C++ Errata web page, http://aristeia.com/BookErrata/ec++3e-errata.html. If you'd like to be notified when I update the list, I encourage you to join my mailing list. I use it to make announcements likely to interest people who follow my professional work. For details, consult http://aristeia.com/MailingList/.

Scott Douglas Meyers
Stafford, Oregon
April 2005
http://aristeia.com/

Index

Download the Index file related to this title.

Sample Pages

Download the sample pages (includes Chapter 9 and Index)