Difference between revisions of "C/C++"

Revision as of 12:26, 19 November 2010

C++ programming style is preferrable. For example, in variable declarations, pointers and references should have their reference symbol next to the type rather than to the name. Variables should be initialized where they are declared, and should be declared where they are used. For more details, see Google C++ Style Guide
One-true-brace ident style
Coding header files
Learn from examples and use coding approaches from third-party software

Place Doxygen comments in header files (before declarations of namespaces/classes/structs/typedefs/macros) and main source files (for documenting tools and tests)
Use double forward slash for short comments in the code

Mixing C/C++
Provide main API in C
Use plain C unless you need flexible data structures or STL/Boost functionality
Template C++ is preferrable from the point of view of runtime performance
Mind the life cycle of objects: Default constructor Copy constructor, Destructor
Force C++ linking

Don't use non-standard functions, like itoa
Handling program arguments (avoid argp since it is not supported on many platforms)
Dynamic loading of shared libraries
Avoid variable-length arrays. First, GCC allocates them on the stack. Second, the status of this feature in GCC is BROKEN. Therefore, never do this:

int size;
MPI_Comm_size(MPI_COMM_WORLD, &size);
char names[size][MPI_MAX_PROCESSOR_NAME];

@@ Line 21: / Line 21: @@
 * [http://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/html_node/Program-Arguments.html Handling program arguments] (avoid <code>argp</code> since it is not supported on many platforms)
 * [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_loading Dynamic loading of shared libraries]
-* Avoid [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable-length_array variable-length arrays]. First, GCC allocates them on the stack. Second, the status of this feature in GCC is BROKEN. Third, never do this:
+* Avoid [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable-length_array variable-length arrays]. First, GCC allocates them on the stack. Second, the status of this feature in GCC is BROKEN. Therefore, never do this:
 <source lang="C">
 int size;