C++ Templates: The Complete Guide (Hardcover)

~ David Vandevoorde (Author), (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

The first book to provide complete and accurate information on using templates in C++. A complete reference as well as a tutorial. Includes real-world examples. Every working C++ programmer will need a copy of this book for his or her library.

From the Back Cover

Templates are among the most powerful features of C++, but they are too often neglected, misunderstood, and misused. C++ Templates: The Complete Guide provides software architects and engineers with a clear understanding of why, when, and how to use templates to build and maintain cleaner, faster, and smarter software more efficiently.

C++ Templates begins with an insightful tutorial on basic concepts and language features. The remainder of the book serves as a comprehensive reference, focusing first on language details, then on a wide range of coding techniques, and finally on advanced applications for templates. Examples used throughout the book illustrate abstract concepts and demonstrate best practices.

Readers learn

• The exact behaviors of templates
• How to avoid the pitfalls associated with templates
• Idioms and techniques, from the basic to the previously undocumented
• How to reuse source code without threatening performance or safety
• How to increase the efficiency of C++ programs
• How to produce more flexible and maintainable software

This practical guide shows programmers how to exploit the full power of the template features in C++.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 552 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional (November 22, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0201734842
• ISBN-13: 978-0201734843
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #132,140 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

42 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll fall down..., November 26, 2002

By	Hyman Rosen (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Templates are increasingly becoming one of the most important
aspects of C++ programming, and are the central feature of the
most creative and innovative new C++ projects.

They are reasonably simple in concept, but in the effort to make
them behave "intuitively" for common cases, the actual rules that
describe what they do are hideously complicated. A guide for the
perplexed was sorely needed, and fortunately, has now appeared.

I'm no slouch at the subject myself, but I learned a few things
that I had no inkling of before, just on a casual reading of the
first few chapters. (Although the main thing I am learning once
again is just how insanely stupid C++ syntax is, and how awful
was the choice of angle brackets for template delimiters.) The
authors are experts on the subject, and the material is presented
clearly, with many examples, and above all correctly.

This is another must-have book for people who want to understand
all of C++. (Not that that's possible, except for perhaps half a
dozen people or so. I'll bet more people understand General
Relativity.)

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Comprehensive and Thorough, January 1, 2003

By	"microtherion" (Sim City, CA (Somewhere in the Bay Area)) - See all my reviews

This is a book that the C++ community has been in need of for several years, and it seems that an ideal team of authors has come together for this: Nicolai Josuttis again contributes the thoroughness and lucid writing that has made his earlier book _The C++ Standard Library_ such a pleasure to read, and David Vandevoorde contributes historical background about the evolution of C++ standard and its implementations that help to understand some of the peculiarities of how C++ works today and some of the directions it's likely to evolve in.

The book is divided into 4 parts. Part I gives a basic overview of the template mechanisms in C++ and part II goes into more detail on this. Part III applies templates to standard problems, while part IV covers more exotic uses of templates similar to what is discussed in Alexandrescu's _Modern C++ Design_. Even for a reasonably experienced template user like me, there were many details I learned even from the most fundamental part I.

This is a near perfect book (apart from a few apparent bugs in the code examples that hopefully will get corrected) that will greatly benefit any programmer who works with template based code.

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Definitive Reference to C++ Template Implementations, April 14, 2003

By	"kuphryn" (CA US) - See all my reviews

Hi,

David Vandevoorde and Nicolai Josuttis write a definitive reference to C++ template implementations. This book comprises of four key sections including fundamental template implementations, in-depth template implementations, template designs, and advanced template designs (libraries). The authors are extremely thorough in their explanations of all essential template implementation techniques and provide an unprecedented in-depth analysis on C++ template parameters, arguments, specialization, and overloading. The analysis on these techniques is very valuable. One reason is because in most cases the authors include examples of implementations that do not work and then provide working solutions. For example, they discuss template argument deduction processes especially for template function overloading. There is even a chapter where they analyze C++ compilers and different template instantiation models. In C++ Templates: The Complete Guide, the authors discuss essential C++ template designs and implementation techniques and provide valuable analysis along with some of the more important topics, making this book a definitive reference to C++ template implementations.

In section three and four, Vandevoorde and Josuttis discuss and demonstrate powerful C++ designs utilizing C++ template techniques from previous sections. Topics and examples in these sections incorporate advanced C++ template designs and implementations similar to the foundation of the STL. One example is element binding as in std::pair.

I recommend C++ Templates: The Complete Guide to all real-world C++ programmers.