Tag Archives: cpp11
C++ - Unicode Strings! Say Goodbye to std::string
During my years of programming in C++, the biggest pain were probably strings. There is no simple standard cross platform way for Unicode strings. std::string class by itself is also lacking a lot of methods for every day work. Comparing it to C#, Java or any other language is almost useless. Features as starts with, ends with, to lower, to upper, trim and similar are all missing. It has ==, while Java doesn't. Yes, all of the functions above can be easily written with templates but it adds an extra load of work and maintenance, which we all try to avoid.
After a couple of years I finally decided to try ICU - International Components for Unicode. It's a C++ library for Unicode strings. It weights roughly 20MB when shipped with executable, but it's totally worth it. Linux, Apple, Google Chrome and other mayor companies or products use it. All of the above functions are provided and a couple more, all mayor code tables are supported, file access is with already familiar C like interface and as a bonus it's fully integrated with C++ streams.
icu::UnicodeString str = L"Hi ICU with öäüšćž!";
str = str.toLower();
str = str.append(" Foo! ").trim();
cout << str << endl;
I urge you, give ICU a try!
C++ - The value of ESP was not properly saved across a function call
Run-Time Check Failure #0 - The value of ESP was not properly saved across a function call. This is usually a result of calling a function declared with one calling convention with a function pointer declared with a different calling convention.
Another run time error that is almost impossible to quickly identify and debug. It usually occurs when libraries are involved and use different calling conventions e.g. _stdcall instead of _cdecl or other. But sometimes compiler misses a thing or two and compiles something that it shouldn't, after all, compiler only need to know how many bits and bytes to move and what do to with them to translate your program to an executable or a library. Sometimes it lets you do stupid things...
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C++ - everything to know about Time and Timers
For years, since 1983 when C++ was first released, developers were stuck with C time library, packed in ctime header file. It contains a couple of functions and precision up to a second sometimes just isn't enough. For everything else clock() should be used or OS (Operating System) provided function, which really breaks code portability. In C++11 things got much better, with Chrono module.
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C++ Lambda Expressions
C++ is currently going through some extensive updates started with the new C++11 standard back in 2011. One of the exciting and very powerful new features are anonymous functions also knows as lambdas. You can simply write them inline in your source code and pass them around as function pointers. An example of sorting vector of ints in a descending order:
vector<int> vec = { 10, 1, 5, 6, 7, 3, 5 };
sort(vec.begin(), vec.end(), [](int x, int y) { return x < y; });
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