Appendix A. Beyond Effective C

Appendix A. Beyond Effective C++

Effective C++ covers what I consider to be the most important general guidelines for practicing C++ programmers, but if you're interested in more ways to improve your effectiveness, I encourage you to examine my other C++ books, More Effective C++ and Effective STL.

More Effective C++ covers additional programming guidelines and includes extensive treatments of topics such as efficiency and programming with exceptions. It also describes important C++ programming techniques like smart pointers, reference counting, and proxy objects.

Effective STL is a guideline-oriented book like Effective C++, but it focuses exclusively on making effective use of the Standard Template Library.

Tables of contents for both books are summarized below.

Contents of More Effective C++

Basics

Item 1:	Distinguish between pointers and references
Item 2:	Prefer C++-style casts
Item 3:	Never treat arrays polymorphically
Item 4:	Avoid gratuitous default constructors

Operators

Item 5:	Be wary of user-defined conversion functions
Item 6:	Distinguish between prefix and postfix forms of increment and decrement operators
Item 7:	Never overload &&, ||, or,
Item 8:	Understand the different meanings of new and delete

Exceptions

Item 9:	Use destructors to prevent resource leaks
Item 10:	Prevent resource leaks in constructors
Item 11:	Prevent exceptions from leaving destructors
Item 12:	Understand how throwing an exception differs from passing a parameter or calling a virtual function
Item 13:	Catch exceptions by reference
Item 14:	Use exception specifications judiciously
Item 15:	Understand the costs of exception handling

Efficiency

Item 16:	Remember the 80-20 rule
Item 17:	Consider using lazy evaluation
Item 18:	Amortize the cost of expected computations
Item 19:	Understand the origin of temporary objects
Item 20:	Facilitate the return value optimization
Item 21:	Overload to avoid implicit type conversions
Item 22:	Consider using op= instead of stand-alone op
Item 23:	Consider alternative libraries
Item 24:	Understand the costs of virtual functions, multiple inheritance, virtual base classes, and RTTI

Techniques

Item 25:	Virtualizing constructors and non-member functions
Item 26:	Limiting the number of objects of a class
Item 27:	Requiring or prohibiting heap-based objects
Item 28:	Smart pointers
Item 29:	Reference counting
Item 30:	Proxy classes
Item 31:	Making functions virtual with respect to more than one object

Miscellany

Item 32:	Program in the future tense
Item 33:	Make non-leaf classes abstract
Item 34:	Understand how to combine C++ and C in the same program
Item 35:	Familiarize yourself with the language standard

Contents of Effective STL

Chapter 1: Containers

Item 1:	Choose your containers with care.
Item 2:	Beware the illusion of container-independent code.
Item 3:	Make copying cheap and correct for objects in containers.
Item 4:	Call empty instead of checking size() against zero.
Item 5:	Prefer range member functions to their single-element counterparts.
Item 6:	Be alert for C++'s most vexing parse.
Item 7:	When using containers of newed pointers, remember to delete the pointers before the container is destroyed.
Item 8:	Never create containers of auto_ptrs.
Item 9:	Choose carefully among erasing options.
Item 10:	Be aware of allocator conventions and restrictions.
Item 11:	Understand the legitimate uses of custom allocators.
Item 12:	Have realistic expectations about the thread safety of STL containers.

Chapter 2: vector and string

Item 13:	Prefer vector and string to dynamically allocated arrays.
Item 14:	Use reserve to avoid unnecessary reallocations.
Item 15:	Be aware of variations in string implementations.
Item 16:	Know how to pass vector and string data to legacy APIs.
Item 17:	Use "the swap TRick" to trim excess capacity.
Item 18:	Avoid using vector<bool>.

Chapter 3: Associative Containers

Item 19:	Understand the difference between equality and equivalence.
Item 20:	Specify comparison types for associative containers of pointers.
Item 21:	Always have comparison functions return false for equal values.
Item 22:	Avoid in-place key modification in set and multiset.
Item 23:	Consider replacing associative containers with sorted vectors.
Item 24:	Choose carefully between map::operator[] and map::insert when efficiency is important.
Item 25:	Familiarize yourself with the nonstandard hashed containers.

Chapter 4: Iterators

Item 26:	Prefer iterator to const_iterator, reverse_iterator, and const_reverse_iterator.
Item 27:	Use distance and advance to convert a container's const_iterators to iterators.
Item 28:	Understand how to use a reverse_iterator's base iterator.
Item 29:	Consider istreambuf_iterators for character-by-character input.

Chapter 5: Algorithms

Item 30:	Make sure destination ranges are big enough.
Item 31:	Know your sorting options.
Item 32:	Follow remove-like algorithms by erase if you really want to remove something.
Item 33:	Be wary of remove-like algorithms on containers of pointers.
Item 34:	Note which algorithms expect sorted ranges.
Item 35:	Implement simple case-insensitive string comparisons via mismatch or lexicographical_compare.
Item 36:	Understand the proper implementation of copy_if.
Item 37:	Use accumulate or for_each to summarize ranges.

Chapter 6: Functors, Functor Classes, Functions, etc.

Item 38:	Design functor classes for pass-by-value.
Item 39:	Make predicates pure functions.
Item 40:	Make functor classes adaptable.
Item 41:	Understand the reasons for ptr_fun, mem_fun, and mem_fun_ref.
Item 42:	Make sure less<T> means operator<.

Chapter 7: Programming with the STL

Item 43:	Prefer algorithm calls to hand-written loops.
Item 44:	Prefer member functions to algorithms with the same names.
Item 45:	Distinguish among count, find, binary_search, lower_bound, upper_bound, and equal_range.
Item 46:	Consider function objects instead of functions as algorithm parameters.
Item 47:	Avoid producing write-only code.
Item 48:	Always #include the proper headers.
Item 49:	Learn to decipher STL-related compiler diagnostics.
Item 50:	Familiarize yourself with STL-related web sites.