What C++ pitfalls should I avoid? [closed]

by

A short list might be:

  • Avoid memory leaks through use shared pointers to manage memory allocation and cleanup
  • Use the Resource Acquisition Is Initialization (RAII) idiom to manage resource cleanup – especially in the presence of exceptions
  • Avoid calling virtual functions in constructors
  • Employ minimalist coding techniques where possible – for example, declaring variables only when needed, scoping variables, and early-out design where possible.
  • Truly understand the exception handling in your code – both with regard to exceptions you throw, as well as ones thrown by classes you may be using indirectly. This is especially important in the presence of templates.

RAII, shared pointers and minimalist coding are of course not specific to C++, but they help avoid problems that do frequently crop up when developing in the language.

Some excellent books on this subject are:

  • Effective C++ – Scott Meyers
  • More Effective C++ – Scott Meyers
  • C++ Coding Standards – Sutter & Alexandrescu
  • C++ FAQs – Cline

Reading these books has helped me more than anything else to avoid the kind of pitfalls you are asking about.

More Related Contents:

  1. Why is it wrong to use std::auto_ptr with standard containers?
  2. How do I safely pass objects, especially STL objects, to and from a DLL?
  3. Writing your own STL Container
  4. Is it okay to inherit implementation from STL containers, rather than delegate?
  5. How to retrieve all keys (or values) from a std::map and put them into a vector?
  6. Using local classes with STL algorithms
  7. C++ Erase vector element by value rather than by position? [duplicate]
  8. How do I print the elements of a C++ vector in GDB?
  9. std::string::c_str() and temporaries
  10. What’s faster, iterating an STL vector with vector::iterator or with at()?
  11. Why don’t STL containers have virtual destructors?
  12. Why is “!=” used with iterators instead of “
  13. What is the past-the-end iterator in STL C++?
  14. Reverse map lookup
  15. use std::fill to populate vector with increasing numbers
  16. What is the default hash function used in C++ std::unordered_map?
  17. Capturing a time in milliseconds
  18. Can we use a user defined class for the key in a STL map?
  19. Performance of qsort vs std::sort?
  20. How does C++ STL unordered_map resolve collisions?
  21. Are const_iterators faster?
  22. How to use the priority queue STL for objects?
  23. std::vector reserve() and push_back() is faster than resize() and array index, why?
  24. std::mutex performance compared to win32 CRITICAL_SECTION
  25. Why the libc++ std::vector internally keeps three pointers instead of one pointer and two sizes?
  26. Visual c++ “for each” portability
  27. Is stl vector concurrent read thread-safe?
  28. Should you overload swap in the std namespace?
  29. list of polymorphic objects
  30. STL containers with reference to objects [duplicate]

Leave a Comment