C++ for C programmers, part 2 of 2

This article lists the features C++ adds to C, from an ex-C programmer’s point of view. A couple of months ago I wrote part 1, which detailed the non-OO features. This second part details the object-oriented features, though I haven’t given them exactly watertight separation.

Again, this is a quick reference, and the idea is to follow the links to further information if you want to know more about any of them.

So, part 2 of 2, the OO features.

Class and (de)constructors

• Classes and the class keyword (of course). Think of them as your own datatypes. Or — and someone will probably tell me this is terrible advice — think of them as structs with attached functions. An instance of a class is called an object, and when you call myobject.func(42) it’s like calling func(&myobject, 42) in C, but the first parameter is implicit, and func is in its own namespace (the class’s).
• Along with instance data and instance functions (which act on the instance data), classes can also have static data and static functions — which act on the static data, of which there’s only one copy for all objects. You declare the static data inside the class, as in class MyType { static int counter; }, but for the static data to exist you also have to define it outside the class once, as in int MyType::counter;
• Speaking of static, beware the static initialization order fiasco. If you have two static objects, a and b, and a’s constructor uses something from b, you’ve got a 50% chance of failure — unfortunately, the constructor-call order for statics is undefined. You can prevent it without too much trouble.
• Initialization lists for a constructor look funny to a C programmer: MyType() : _myint(5) { ... } is basically equivalent to MyType() { _myint = 5; } — but the former is somewhat better and more idiomatic C++.
• In C++, struct MyType { ... } is equivalent to class MyType { public: ... }. So if you don’t care about privacy, you can save 6 characters on every class you create. :-)
• A class’s constructor is called when an object of that class is instantiated, to create the object from dust. You can overload the constructor if you want to construct your object from different things (e.g., an int as well as a float).
• A class’s destructor is called when the object goes out of scope or is deleted, and frees or closes any resources the object has allocated or opened.
• Related to this is RAII, or Resource Acquisition Is Initialization. This is a nasty name for what I call AC/DC — Acquire in Constructor, Destructor does Cleanup. C++ nicely calls object destructors in a deterministic way (when the object goes out of scope, even if an exception occurs).
• A default constructor is a constructor with no arguments (or one that can be called with no arguments). If you don’t define one, C++’s default default constructor simply calls the default constructor of all its member objects and base classes. The default constructor is called when you declare an object without arguments like MyType x; or an array of objects like MyType x[10];
• The copy constructor initialises a new object from an existing one, usually copying its values, and you define one like this: MyType(const MyType& x) { ... }. The copy constructor is called when you define MyType a = b; or when you pass or return a MyType to a function by value, but note that it’s not called when you just say a = b; (that’s not constructing an object, so it calls the assignment operator instead).
• The assignment operator, operator=, is called when you say a = b; and both a and b are instances of MyType. The default assignment operator is simply to copy all members, which is fine until you have to allocate buffers in your constructor — instead of having C++ copy pointers, you’ll want to overload operator=. An assignment operator will typically allocate new resources for a and copy b‘s data, then free a‘s old buffers.
• A constructor with a single argument is automatically used as a “type converter”. So if you define MyType(int n) { ... }, you can say things like MyType a = 5; and it’ll automatically call that constructor.
• But this can be dangerous, and you can tell the compiler not to convert automatically by prefixing your constructor with the explicit keyword, as in explicit MyType(int n) { ... }
• A method can be declared const, which tells the compiler it won’t change the object, it’ll just look at it. They’re used all the time for getData()-style accessor functions.
• The rarely-used mutable keyword means you can change this variable even in a const method. MSDN has a succinct explanation and example.
• Inside a member function, the this keyword is a pointer to the current object. Unlike self in Python, in C++ it’s usually implicit. It’d be slightly nicer as a reference, and Stroustrup indicated he’d have made this a reference if references were part of the languages way back when.

Virtual functions

• One of the most important constructs in OO C++, a virtual function, is a method which can be overridden by a subclass. If you have a Cat class with a virtual void make_noise() method, then your subclasses HouseCat and Lion can override that with meowing and roaring behaviour. If you have a list of Cats and want them all to make noise, you simply loop through the list and call make_noise() on each one (the virtual function table takes care of the details). Note that in languages like Python, all functions act virtual.
• A pure virtual function is a virtual function in your parent class that must be overridden in the base class — all cats make noise. The class with the pure virtual function is called “abstract”, and you can’t instantiate it directly. A class with only pure virtual functions defines an interface or API. The weirdest thing about pure virtual functions are their weird =0 syntax: you define them like so: virtual void make_noise() = 0;
• You should define your destructor as virtual when your class has one or more virtual functions. If you don’t, and you delete an object through a base class pointer, the subclass’s destructor won’t get called — memory leak. Stroustrup has an example (albeit contrived) of how this works.

Inheritance and friends

• Classes can have public, private, and protected sections. Private variables and methods are only accessible by the class’s own members, not even its subclasses — useful for implementation details you don’t want to expose as part of the class’s API. Protected members are accessible by subclasses, but not anyone else. And public members are accessible by everyone.
• However, if B is defined as a friend class or friend member inside class A, B can access A’s private parts (yes, it should probably be called married_to). The C++ FAQ Lite has a good section on friendship.
• Public inheritance is the usual form of “a Lion is a Cat” inheritance (class Lion : public Cat { ... };). I’ve never used private and protected inheritance, and can’t quite figure them out, so I’m leaving that as an exercise for the reader. :-)
• Multiple inheritance is when your class inherits from two base classes at once. Don’t get too clever with this! For instance, if Dad pays the bills, you could have class Dad : public Human, public BreadWinner { ... };

Type casting

• Right up there with the =0 notation and using bit-shift operators for I/O are the C++ cast operators. You can use regular C casts like i = (int)f; but they’re discouraged. You use static_cast<type>(expression) to cast between numeric types or to cast a pointer down in an inheritance chain (you’ve got to be somewhat careful). Use reinterpret_cast<type>(expression) to cast expression’s bits to type (know what a core dump is first). And use const_cast to cast away the const attribute on something.
• There’s also dynamic_cast<type>(expression) to cast pointers or references, which is safe but requires compiler run-time overhead. It checks the type of expression at run-time, and if it’s able to be casted to type, all good. If not, dynamic_cast returns NULL (or throws an exception for references).
• More generally, there’s RTTI (Run-Time Type Information): dynamic_cast is part of that, and the other part is the typeid(expression) operator, which returns a type information object about the given expression. Useful for comparing types at run-time, printing type names, etc.

New and delete

• To allocate an object on the heap, use Class* pobj = new Class; — this tries to allocate memory (throwing an exception if that fails) and calls Class’s constructor on the object. You can allocate arrays with new like int* pint = new int[5];. For super-advanced control over how new allocates, read up on placement new and overloading new.
• Of course, the opposite of new is delete, which calls the class’s destructor and then frees the memory new allocated. Just like with malloc() and free(), for every new there must be an equal and opposite delete. Hint: use AC/DC (RAII) if you can.

Operator overloading

• You can overload pretty much all operators in C++ to work with your own classes. If someone else has done this for you, great (e.g., std::string overloading + to mean concatenation). But mainly because of C++’s memory and exception model, there are many gotchas. Do your homework before getting too clever.
• Note that you can’t overload these operators: . ?: :: and the semi-obscure .* operator. Also, you can’t add operators of your own (say ** to mean to-the-power-of).

Templates

• It took me a while to grok templates, but they’re simple at heart — just a way to avoid repeating yourself. Instead of writing an IntArray class and then finding you need FloatArray and StringArray later, you can just write a generic Array<T> class which is an Array of class or type T. That’s a class template.
• Function templates let you write generic functions instead of classes. So instead of writing min(int x, int y) and min(double x, double y) you can just write a min<T>(T x, T y). Then you can call min() on whatever number types you want and the compiler will generate the right code for each (yes, all this usually means bigger executables).
• Template arguments can have defaults. So you can have say LargeNumber<class T =long> — if you instantiate a plain LargeNumber it’ll use longs, but you can override it to use doubles by saying LargeNumber<double>.

Exceptions

• Exception handling in C++, like operator overloading, is a really nice idea that can turn sour pretty quickly if you don’t keep it in the fridge (i.e., handle with care). A number of C++ coding standards simply disallow exceptions, perhaps for good reason. At least make sure you learn the way of the RAII before delving here.

Well, thanks for listening!

10 August 2010 by Ben    5 comments

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