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“Every C++ professional needs a copy of Effective C++. It is an absolute must-read for anyone thinking of doing serious C++ development. If you’ve never read Effective C++ and you think you know everything about C++, think again.”
— Steve Schirripa, Software Engineer, Google

“C++ and the C++ community have grown up in the last fifteen years, and the third edition of Effective C++ reflects this. The clear and precise style of the book is evidence of Scott’s deep insight and distinctive ability to impart knowledge.”
— Gerhard Kreuzer, Research and Development Engineer, Siemens AG

The first two editions of Effective C++ were embraced by hundreds of thousands of programmers worldwide. The reason is clear: Scott Meyers’ practical approach to C++ describes the rules of thumb used by the experts — the things they almost always do or almost always avoid doing — to produce clear, correct, efficient code.

The book is organized around 55 specific guidelines, each of which describes a way to write better C++. Each is backed by concrete examples. For this third edition, more than half the content is new, including added chapters on managing resources and using templates. Topics from the second edition have been extensively revised to reflect modern design considerations, including exceptions, design patterns, and multithreading.

Important features of Effective C++ include:

• Expert guidance on the design of effective classes, functions, templates, and inheritance hierarchies.
• Applications of new “TR1” standard library functionality, along with comparisons to existing standard library components.
• Insights into differences between C++ and other languages (e.g., Java, C#, C) that help developers from those languages assimilate “the C++ way” of doing things.

Preface

I wrote the original edition of Effective C++ in 1991. When the time came for a second edition in 1997, I updated the material in important ways, but, because I didn’t want to confuse readers familiar with the first edition, I did my best to retain the existing structure: 48 of the original 50 Item titles remained essentially unchanged. If the book were a house, the second edition was the equivalent of freshening things up by replacing carpets, paint, and light fixtures.

For the third edition, I tore the place down to the studs. (There were times I wished I’d gone all the way to the foundation.) The world of C++ has undergone enormous change since 1991, and the goal of this book — to identify the most important C++ programming guidelines in a small, readable package — was no longer served by the Items I’d established nearly 15 years earlier. In 1991, it was reasonable to assume that C++ programmers came from a C background. Now, programmers moving to C++ are just as likely to come from Java or C#. In 1991, inheritance and object-oriented programming were new to most programmers. Now they’re well-established concepts, and exceptions, templates, and generic programming are the areas where people need more guidance. In 1991, nobody had heard of design patterns. Now it’s hard to discuss software systems without referring to them. In 1991, work had just begun on a formal standard for C++. Now that standard is eight years old, and work has begun on the next version.

To address these changes, I wiped the slate as clean as I could and asked myself, “What are the most important pieces of advice for practicing C++ programmers in 2005?” The result is the set of Items in this new edition. The book has new chapters on resource management and on programming with templates. In fact, template concerns are woven throughout the text, because they affect almost everything in C++. The book also includes new material on programming in the presence of exceptions, on applying design patterns, and on using the new TR1 library facilities. (TR1 is described in Item54.) It acknowledges that techniques and approaches that work well in single-threaded systems may not be appropriate in multithreaded systems. Well over half the material in the book is new. However, most of the fundamental information in the second edition continues to be important, so I found a way to retain it in one form or another. (You’ll find a mapping between the second and third edition Items in Appendix B.)

I’ve worked hard to make this book as good as I can, but I have no illusions that it’s perfect. If you feel that some of the Items in this book are inappropriate as general advice; that there is a better way to accomplish a task examined in the book; or that one or more of the technical discussions is unclear, incomplete, or misleading, please tell me. If you find an error of any kind — technical, grammatical, typographical, whatever — please tell me that, too. I’ll gladly add to the acknowledgments in later printings the name of the first person to bring each problem to my attention.

Even with the number of Items expanded to 55, the set of guidelines in this book is far from exhaustive. But coming up with good rules —ones that apply to almost all applications almost all the time — is harder than it might seem. If you have suggestions for additional guidelines, I would be delighted to hear about them.

I maintain a list of changes to this book since its first printing, including bug fixes, clarifications, and technical updates. The list is available at the Effective C++ Errata web page. If you’d like to be notified when I update the list, I encourage you to join my mailing list. I use it to make announcements likely to interest people who follow my professional work.

Scott Douglas Meyers
Stafford, Oregon
April 2005

Table of Contents

Preface xv

Acknowledgments xvii

Introduction 1

Chapter 1: Accustoming Yourself to C++ 11

Item 1: View C++ as a federation of languages. 11

Item 2: Prefer consts, enums, and inlines to #defines. 13

Item 3: Use const whenever possible. 17

Item 4: Make sure that objects are initialized before they’re used. 26

Chapter 2: Constructors, Destructors, and Assignment Operators 34

Item 5: Know what functions C++ silently writes and calls. 34

Item 6: Explicitly disallow the use of compiler-generated functions you do not want. 37

Item 7: Declare destructors virtual in polymorphic base classes. 40

Item 8: Prevent exceptions from leaving destructors. 44

Item 9: Never call virtual functions during construction or destruction. 48

Item 10: Have assignment operators return a reference to *this. 52

Item 11: Handle assignment to self in operator=. 53

Item 12: Copy all parts of an object. 57

Chapter 3: Resource Management 61

Item 13: Use objects to manage resources. 61

Item 14: Think carefully about copying behavior in resource-managing classes. 66

Item 15: Provide access to raw resources in resource-managing classes. 69

Item 16: Use the same form in corresponding uses of new and delete. 73

Item 17: Store newed objects in smart pointers in standalone statements. 75

Chapter 4: Designs and Declarations 78

Item 18: Make interfaces easy to use correctly and hard to use incorrectly. 78

Item 19: Treat class design as type design. 84

Item 20: Prefer pass-by-reference-to-const to pass-by-value. 86

Item 21: Don’t try to return a reference when you must return an object. 90

Item 22: Declare data members private. 94

Item 23: Prefer non-member non-friend functions to member functions. 98

Item 24: Declare non-member functions when type conversions should apply to all parameters. 102

Item 25: Consider support for a non-throwing swap. 106

Chapter 5: Implementations 113

Item 26: Postpone variable definitions as long as possible. 113

Item 27: Minimize casting. 116

Item 28: Avoid returning “handles” to object internals. 123

Item 29: Strive for exception-safe code. 127

Item 30: Understand the ins and outs of inlining. 134

Item 31: Minimize compilation dependencies between files. 140

Chapter 6: Inheritance and Object-Oriented Design 149

Item 32: Make sure public inheritance models “is-a.” 150

Item 33: Avoid hiding inherited names. 156

Item 34: Differentiate between inheritance of interface and inheritance of implementation. 161

Item 35: Consider alternatives to virtual functions. 169

Item 36: Never redefine an inherited non-virtual function. 178

Item 37: Never redefine a function’s inherited default parameter value. 180

Item 38: Model “has-a” or “is-implemented-in-terms-of” through composition. 184

Item 39: Use private inheritance judiciously. 187

Item 40: Use multiple inheritance judiciously. 192

Chapter 7: Templates and Generic Programming 199

Item 41: Understand implicit interfaces and compile-time polymorphism. 199

Item 42: Understand the two meanings of typename. 203

Item 43: Know how to access names in templatized base classes. 207

Item 44: Factor parameter-independent code out of templates. 212

Item 45: Use member function templates to accept “all compatible types.” 218

Item 46: Define non-member functions inside templates when type conversions are desired. 222

Item 47: Use traits classes for information about types. 226

Item 48: Be aware of template metaprogramming. 233

Chapter 8: Customizing new and delete 239

Item 49: Understand the behavior of the new-handler. 240

Item 50: Understand when it makes sense to replace new and delete. 247

Item 51: Adhere to convention when writing new and delete. 252

Item 52: Write placement delete if you write placement new. 256

Chapter 9: Miscellany 262

Item 53: Pay attention to compiler warnings. 262

Item 54: Familiarize yourself with the standard library, including TR1. 263

Item 55: Familiarize yourself with Boost. 269

Appendix A: Beyond Effective C++ 273

Appendix B: Item Mappings Between Second and Third Editions 277

Index 280

About the Author

Scott Meyers is one of the world’s foremost experts on C++ software development. He is author of the best-selling Effective C++ series (Effective C++, More Effective C++, and Effective STL), designer and author of the innovative Effective C++ CD, consulting editor for Addison-Wesley’s Effective Software Development Series, and a member of the advisory board for Software Development magazine. He has served on the technical advisory boards for several start-up companies. Meyers received his Ph.D. in computer science from Brown University in 1993.

Jul 10, 2005     G. Wade Johnson from Houston, TX
Meyers improves our C++ effectiveness once again
Scott Meyers' latest edition of Effective C++ is not a rehash of older material. I would be tempted to suggest that it should have been called "Even More Effective C++". Meyers begins this book with the realization that the advice C++ programmers need in 2005 is very different from the advice we needed in 1991. For that reason, this edition covers a different set of best practices than the original.

Meyers writing is, as usual, extremely readable. He also explains his 55 items with enough detail and reason that it is hard not to just accept each of these principles as law. He manages to cover syntactic oddities and object-oriented design with equal clarity and insight.

Like the first edition, this book is destined to become an authoritative reference for C++ best practices. Meyers does not just confine himself to the simple usage of the C++ language, he spends time on templates, class design, library use, and new extensions. All in all, this is a critical reference for anyone who is serious about programming in C++.

I recommend this book to anyone who will be programming in C++, o matter what their current level of experience.

Jun 15, 2005     A Clarke
Like wine - older and better
"Effective C++: 55 Specific Ways to Improve Your Programs and Designs" recently came out in its 3rd edition. The first came out in 1991, making this line of book revisions positively ancient in high tech terms. But you should consider the elapsed 14 years and investment in wisdom, not staleness. Unlike the 2nd edition, this is a complete rewrite from the ground up. More than that, Scott Meyers begins from first principles, reevaluating what topics are most important to the programmers of 2005. This was a very strategic and insightful move. Not only has the language evolved over that time, but the audience has too. In the first edition, the likely readers were coming from languages like C. Now the likely readers cross over from some other object-orient language, like Java or C#. Keep in mind that the author focuses strictly on standard C++; he does not address anything that is platform-specific. Like its predecessors, the items can be read stand-alone, though he does cross reference related items. The 55 items are grouped into the following chapters: Chapter 1: Accustoming Yourself to C++ Chapter 2: Constructors, Destructors, and Assignment Operators Chapter 3: Resource Management Chapter 4: Designs and Declarations Chapter 5: Inheritance Chapter 6: Implementations and Object-Oriented Design Chapter 7: Templates and Generic Programming Chapter 8: Customizing new and delete Chapter 9: Miscellany I would hate to have to learn the lessons in this book by hard experience. It would be costly in time and might unfortunately might even cover more than one employment span. Most decisions that are undertaken by developers should consider ROI (return on investment), which always is measured in terms of time. For developers considering professional education material like this, the measure should be in terms of how many mistakes could be avoided before the book pays for itself. In this case, the ROI is probably 1-2 defects. If your shelfspace for C++ books has only three slots, this book should one of those "must haves." The book's ISBN is 0-321-33487-6 and it retails for $45 US. Scott's web site is at http://ariseia.com and the errata for this book

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