C++ Gotchas: Avoiding Common Problems in Coding and Design

This book is the result of nearly two decades of minor frustrations, serious bugs, late nights, and weekends spent involuntarily at the keyboard. This collection consists of 99 of some of the more common, severe, or interesting C++ gotchas, most of which I have (I'm sorry to say) experienced personally.

The term "gotcha" has a cloudy history and a variety of definitions. For purposes of this book, we'll define C++ gotchas as common and preventable problems in C++ programming and design. The gotchas described here run the gamut from minor syntactic annoyances to basic design flaws to full-blown sociopathic behavior. Almost ten years ago, I started including notes about individual gotchas in my C++ course material.

My feeling was that pointing out these common misconceptions and misapplications in apposition to correct use would inoculate the student against them and help prevent new generations of C++ programmers from repeating the gotchas of the past. By and large, the approach worked, and I was induced to collect sets of related gotchas for presentation at conferences. These presentations proved to be popular (misery loves company?), and I was encouraged to write a "gotcha" book.

Any discussion of avoiding or recovering from C++ gotchas involves other subjects, most commonly design patterns, idioms, and technical details of C++ language features. This is not a book about design patterns, but we often find ourselves referring to patterns as a means of avoiding or recovering from a particular gotcha. Conventionally, the pattern name is capitalized, as in "Template Method" pattern or "Bridge" pattern. When we mention a pattern, we describe its mechanics briefly if they're simple but delegate detailed discussion of patterns to works devoted to them.

Unless otherwise noted, a fuller description of a pattern, as well as a richer discussion of patterns in general, may be found in Erich Gamma et al.'s Design Patterns . Descriptions of the Acyclic Visitor, Monostate, and Null Object patterns may be found in Robert Martin's Agile Software Development .

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