Grundkurs i C++

Background and Overview

• From cfront, Classic C++ and into Modern C++
• Design objectives
• Some myths and facts of C++

Scalar Types and Operators

• Integral types
• Floating-point types
• Boolean
• Characters
• Type variations, such as short/long, signed/unsigned
• Variables
• Lexical scopes
• Automatic type inference using auto

Composite Types

• Native arrays
• Struct
• Classes (briefly)
• Unions
• Enum types
• Name spaces
• Type aliases

Statements

• If statements
• While loops
• For loops
• Foreach loops
• Switch statements

Functions

• Function syntax
• Call by-value vs. call by-reference
• Return by reference
• Overloaded functions
• Default parameters
• Template functions
• Extern declarations
• Compilation units
• Program organization
• Linking C code

Lambda Expressions

• Lambda syntax
• Passing free variables by reference or value
• Functions taking lambdas as parameters and/or returning lambdas

Pointers and references

• Pointer declarations
• Dereferencing operator
• Address operator
• Pointer arithmetics
• Dangling pointers
• The illusion of arrays
• Nativ text strings and the danger of using them
• Pointers to struct/class objects
• Function pointers
• References
• Call-by reference
• Return by-reference
• What is move semantics
• Rvalue references

Text Strings and Regexs

• Why using std::string instead of nativ strings
• Overview of std::string and its functions/operators
• What is SSO (Short String Optimization) and how it is used
• Working with legacy strings
• Character oriented functions
• Multi-line string literals
• What is a regex
• The regex support in modern C++
• Matching text data to patterns
• Searching using patterns
• Replacing text fragments using patterns
• Using regex iterators
• Typical use cases
• Splitting and joining strings

I/O Streams and Files

• ostream / ofstream / ostringstream
• istream / ifstream / istringstream
• Bi-directional I/O with fstream
• Manipulators
• The input idiom
• Line-oriented input
• Word-oriented input
• Character-oriented input

Helper Types

• Pair
• Tuple
• Date-times
• Durations
• Clocks
• Date formatting
• Random number generators

STL Container Types

• Sequence containers and typical methods
• vector / dequeue / array
• list / forward_list
• Associative containers
• Tree vs. hash implementations
• Unique vs. multi-key versions
• set / unordered_set
• map / unordered_map
• Container adapters

STL Iterators and Intervals

• What is an iterator
• What is a range and how is it used
• Iterator categories
• I/O iterators
• End-point adapter functions

STL Algorithms

• What is a std::* algorithm
• The STL architecture
• How to pass the business logic into algorithm functions
• Understanding *_n and *_if suffixes of functions
• Using functions with predicates
• Using back_inserter iterators
• Transforming and aggregating
• Sorting
• Populating data into containers

Classes (User Defined Types)

• What is a user-defined type
• Specification vs. implementation
• Member variables and functions
• Object creation (instantiation)
• Visibility
• Constructors
• Destructor
• Inline member functions
• Member overloading
• The pointer this

Class Member Forms

• Class variables and functions
• Member references
• Read-only variables
• Const marked functions
• Inner classes
• Friend declarations

Constructors and Destructors

• Initialization
• Default constructor
• Destructor
• Copy constructor
• Assignment operator
• Pitfalls
• Standardized class form
• Enforcing compiler-generated members
• Deleting compiler-generated members
• Type conversion constructor
• Type conversion operator
• What is move semantics
• Move constructor
• Move assigment operator

Heap Allocated Objects

• What is dynamic memory anyway
• Using the new and delete operators
• Pitfalls
• The placement variant of new

Exceptions

• What is an exception
• Throwing exceptions
• Catching exceptions
• The merits of automatic destruction during throw
• Exceptions in the standard library
• Pitfalls

Templates

• What is a template
• Function templates
• Class Templates
• Member function templates
• Template parameter forms
• Type equivalence
• Template specialization
• Pitfalls
• Type traits
• Using decltype()
• Variadic templates

Operator Overloading

• What is operator overloading
• Syntax
• Overloadable operators
• Rule set
• Overloading of arithmetic operators
• Overloading of relational operators
• Overloading of I/O operators
• Overloading of ++/– operators
• Overloading of the index operator
• Overloading of the arrow operator
• Overloading of the function-call operator

Inheritance and Virtual Functions

• What is inheritance
• Syntax
• Protected visibility
• Invocation of super-class members
• References and pointers of root class type
• Performing down-casts using dynamic_cast
• Constructor initialization order
• Base class visibility
• Virtual member functions and why they are important
• Abstract functions
• Use of override and final specifiers
• Multiple inheritance and why you need to be careful
• Implementing Java-style interfaces in C++

The Pre-Processor

• Include files
• CPP constants
• Pre-defined constants
• Conditional compilation
• Include guards
• CPP macro functions
• Stringification and name-catenation
• Assertions

Building C++ Applications

• Compilation steps
• What is an abstract syntax tree (AST)
• The assembler
• Inline assembly code
• The linker
• Name mangling of C++ names
• Inspecting the linker symbol table
• The loader
• Tracing executions
• Compiler flags for warnings
• Compiler flags for optimizations
• Compiler flags for debugging
• Creating a static archive file
• Creating a dynamic linked library

Build Tools and Open-Source Libraries

• Make
• GNU Autotools
• CMake
• Gradle
• Doxygen
• Google Test
• Catch2
• log4cxx
• Boost
• Poco

Standards and Guidelines

• Tracking the standard
• Tracking compilers and what they support
• Online compilers
• The big C++ conference (cppcon)
• The C++ Core Guidelines
• GSL - The Guidelines Support Library