C++ Cookbook

Despite its highly adaptable and flexible nature, C++ is also one of the more complex programming languages to learn. Once mastered, however, it can help you organize and process information with amazing efficiency and quickness. The C++ Cookbook will make your path to mastery much shorter. This practical, problem-solving guide is ideal if you're an engineer, programmer, or researcher writing an application for one of the legions of platforms on which C++ runs. The algorithms provided in C++ Cookbook will jump-start your development by giving you some basic building blocks that you don't have to develop on your own. Less a tutorial than a problem-solver, the book addresses many of the most common problems you're likely encounter--whether you've been programming in C++ for years or you're relatively new to the language. Here are just some of the time-consuming tasks this book contains practical solutions for: * Reading the contents of a directory * Creating a singleton class * Date and time parsing/arithmetic * String and text manipulation * Working with files * Parsing XML * Using the standard containers Typical of O'Reilly's "Cookbook" series, C++ Cookbook is written in a straightforward format, featuring recipes that contain problem statements and code solutions, and apply not to hypothetical situations, but those that you're likely to encounter. A detailed explanation then follows each recipe in order to show you how and why the solution works. This question-solution-discussion format is a proven teaching method, as any fan of the "Cookbook" series can attest to. This book will move quickly to the top of your list of essential C++ references.

Table of Contents:
Preface 1. Building C++ Applications 1.1 Obtaining and Installing GCC 1.2 Building a Simple "Hello, World" Application from the Command Line 1.3 Building a Static Library from the Command Line 1.4 Building a Dynamic Library from the Command Line 1.5 Building a Complex Application from the Command Line 1.6 Installing Boost.Build 1.7 Building a Simple "Hello, World" Application Using Boost.Build 1.8 Building a Static Library Using Boost.Build 1.9 Building a Dynamic Library Using Boost.Build 1.10 Building a Complex Application Using Boost.Build 1.11 Building a Static Library with an IDE 1.12 Building a Dynamic Library with an IDE 1.13 Building a Complex Application with an IDE 1.14 Obtaining GNU make 1.15 Building A Simple "Hello, World" Application with GNU make 1.16 Building a Static Library with GNU Make 1.17 Building a Dynamic Library with GNU Make 1.18 Building a Complex Application with GNU make 1.19 Defining a Macro 1.20 Specifying a Command-Line Option from Your IDE 1.21 Producing a Debug Build 1.22 Producing a Release Build 1.23 Specifying a Runtime Library Variant 1.24 Enforcing Strict Conformance to the C++ Standard 1.25 Causing a Source File to Be Linked Automatically Against a Specified Library 1.26 Using Exported Templates 2. Code Organization 2.1 Making Sure a Header File Gets Included Only Once 2.2 Ensuring You Have Only One Instance of a Variable Across Multiple Source Files 2.3 Reducing #includes with Forward Class Declarations 2.4 Preventing Name Collisions with Namespaces 2.5 Including an Inline File 3. Numbers 3.1 Converting a String to a Numeric Type 3.2 Converting Numbers to Strings 3.3 Testing Whether a String ontains a Valid Number 3.4 Comparing Floating-Point Numbers with Bounded Accuracy 3.5 Parsing a String Containing a Number in Scientific Notation 3.6 Converting Between Numeric Types 3.7 Getting the Minimum and Maximum Values for a Numeric Type 4. Strings and Text 4.1 Padding a String 4.2 Trimming a String 4.3 Storing Strings in a Sequence 4.4 Getting the Length of a String 4.5 Reversing a String 4.6 Splitting a String 4.7 Tokenizing a String 4.8 Joining a Sequence of Strings 4.9 Finding Things in Strings 4.10 Finding the nth Instance of a Substring 4.11 Removing a Substring from a String 4.12 Converting a String to Lower- or Uppercase 4.13 Doing a Case-Insensitive String Comparison 4.14 Doing a Case-Insensitive String Search 4.15 Converting Between Tabs and Spaces in a Text File 4.16 Wrapping Lines in a Text File 4.17 Counting the Number of Characters, Words, and Lines in a Text File 4.18 Counting Instances of Each Word in a Text File 4.19 Add Margins to a Text File 4.20 Justify a Text File 4.21 Squeeze Whitespace to Single Spaces in a Text File 4.22 Autocorrect Text as a Buffer Changes 4.23 Reading a Comma-Separated Text File 4.24 Using Regular Expressions to Split a String 5. Dates and Times 5.1 Obtaining the Current Date and Time 5.2 Formatting a Date/Time as a String 5.3 Performing Date and Time Arithmetic 5.4 Converting Between Time Zones 5.5 Determining a Day's Number Within a Given Year 5.6 Defining Constrained Value Types 6. Managing Data with Containers 6.1 Using vectors Instead of Arrays 6.2 Using vectors Efficiently 6.3 Copying a vector 6.4 Storing Pointers in a vector 6.5 Storing Objects in a list 6.6 Mapping strings to Other Things 6.7 Using Hashed Containers 6.8 Storing Objects in Sorted Order 6.9 Storing Containers in Containers 7. Algorithms 7.1 Iterating Through a Container 7.2 Removing Objects from a Container 7.3 Randomly Shuffling Data 7.4 Comparing Ranges 7.5 Merging Data 7.6 Sorting a Range 7.7 Partitioning a Range 7.8 Performing Set Operations on Sequences 7.9 Transforming Elements in a Sequence 7.10 Writing Your Own Algorithm 7.11 Printing a Range to a Stream 8. Classes 8.1 Initializing Class Member Variables 8.2 Using a Function to Create Objects (a.k.a. Factory Pattern) 8.3 Using Constructors and Destructors to Manage Resources (or RAII) 8.4 Automatically Adding New Class Instances to a Container 8.5 Ensuring a Single Copy of a Member Variable 8.6 Determining an Object's Type at Runtime 8.7 Determining if One Object's Class Is a Subclass of Another 8.8 Giving Each Instance of a Class a Unique Identifier 8.9 Creating a Singleton Class 8.10 Creating an Interface with an Abstract Base Class 8.11 Writing a Class Template 8.12 Writing a Member Function Template 8.13 Overloading the Increment and Decrement Operators 8.14 Overloading Arithmetic and Assignment Operators for Intuitive Class Behavior 8.15 Calling a Superclass Virtual Function 9. Exceptions and Safety 9.1 Creating an Exception Class 9.2 Making a Constructor Exception-Safe 9.3 Making an Initializer List Exception-Safe 9.4 Making Member Functions Exception-Safe 9.5 Safely Copying an Object10. Streams and Files 10.1 Lining Up Text Output 10.2 Formatting Floating-Point Output 10.3 Writing Your Own Stream Manipulators 10.4 Making a Class Writable to a Stream 10.5 Making a Class Readable from a Stream 10.6 Getting Information About a File 10.7 Copying a File 10.8 Deleting or Renaming a File 10.9 Creating a Temporary Filename and File 10.10 Creating a Directory 10.11 Removing a Directory 10.12 Reading the Contents of a Directory 10.13 Extracting a File Extension from a String 10.14 Extracting a Filename from a Full Path 10.15 Extracting a Path from a Full Path and Filename 10.16 Replacing a File Extension 10.17 Combining Two Paths into a Single Path11. Science and Mathematics 11.1 Computing the Number of Elements in a Container 11.2 Finding the Greatest or Least Value in a Container 11.3 Computing the Sum and Mean of Elements in a Container 11.4 Filtering Values Outside a Given Range 11.5 Computing Variance, Standard Deviation, and Other Statistical Functions 11.6 Generating Random Numbers 11.7 Initializing a Container with Random Numbers 11.8 Representing a Dynamically Sized Numerical Vector 11.9 Representing a Fixed-Size Numerical Vector 11.10 Computing a Dot Product 11.11 Computing the Norm of a Vector 11.12 Computing the Distance Between Two Vectors 11.13 Implementing a Stride Iterator 11.14 Implementing a Dynamically Sized Matrix 11.15 Implementing a Constant-Sized Matrix 11.16 Multiplying Matricies 11.17 Computing the Fast Fourier Transform 11.18 Working with Polar Coordinates 11.19 Performing Arithmetic on Bitsets 11.20 Representing Large Fixed-Width Integers 11.21 Implementing Fixed-Point Numbers 12. Multithreading 12.1 Creating a Thread 12.2 Making a Resource Thread-Safe 12.3 Notifying One Thread from Another 12.4 Initializing Shared Resources Once 12.5 Passing an Argument to a Thread Function 13. Internationalization 13.1 Hardcoding a Unicode String 13.2 Writing and Reading Numbers 13.3 Writing and Reading Dates and Times 13.4 Writing and Reading Currency 13.5 Sorting Localized Strings 14. XML 14.1 Parsing a Simple XML Document 14.2 Working with Xerces Strings 14.3 Parsing a Complex XML Document 14.4 Manipulating an XML document 14.5 Validating an XML Document with a DTD 14.6 Validating an XML Document with a Schema 14.7 Transforming an XML Document with XSLT 14.8 Evaluating an XPath Expression 14.9 Using XML to Save and Restore a Collection of Objects15. Miscellaneous 15.1 Using Function Pointers for Callbacks 15.2 Using Pointers to Class Members 15.3 Ensuring That a Function Doesn't Modify an Argument 15.4 Ensuring That a Member Function Doesn't Modify Its Object 15.5 Writing an Operator That Isn't a Member Function 15.6 Initializing a Sequence with Comma-Separated Values Index