How To Use Standard Libraries to Improve Your C++ Code Quality

How To Use Standard Libraries to Improve Your C++ Code Quality

For a long time I avoided using the standard library in my C++ projects. I didn’t think it was very useful and it seemed like a lot of extra code to add to my project, so I opted for writing my own utility functions instead.

I have since learned that this is a bad idea and that everyone should learn to use the standard library instead of writing your own code for common programming tasks. This blog post documents some ways you can use the standard library to improve your code quality (and make your life easier).

String processing

First, let’s discuss string processing. The standard library has many useful functions built in with , including string concatenation, substring extraction, and splitting on custom delimiters. You will also be able to use the stream operator ( << ) with strings without any additional work. Below are some examples of common string operations: C++ has the reputation of being a very complicated language. This is due to the fact that it's an extremely flexible language. While flexibility is important, it also makes it hard to master and learn C++. One way to avoid this complexity is by using standard libraries as much as possible. Standard libraries provide complex functionality in a simple interface and make sure you don't have to deal with the complexities of C++ itself. In this article, I'll show you how to use standard libraries for different aspects of your codebase to improve its quality and reliability. The C++ Standard Library is a collection of classes and functions, which are written in the core language and part of the C++ ISO Standard itself. In this blog post, we will be looking at some of the useful features of the standard library and how to use them to improve your code quality. Standard Template Library The idea behind this post is to write about different features of the C++ standard library that can be used to improve your code quality. In order to do so, we will see some examples of how standard algorithms and containers are used in practice and we will discuss how they can be useful in our code. Instead of writing a long list of tips, I think it's better to see working examples that you can use as inspiration for your own code. There are a number of ways to improve the quality of your C++ code. In this post, we’ll take a look at how you can use the C++ Standard Library to improve the quality of your code. There are a lot of great resources that already exist online giving tips and tricks for improving your C++ code. For example: C++11 Features and STL Additions (for this article, I am going to focus on C++11 features) In my opinion, one of the best ways to improve the quality of your code is to get really comfortable using the Standard Library. There is a lot of functionality in the Standard Library that can reduce complexity and help reduce bugs in your code. In this article, I’m going to share some tips and tricks for using the Standard Library effectively in order to improve your C++ code quality. Let’s start with a few things you might not know about the Standard Library: Try to use standard libraries as much as possible. We often want to reinvent the wheel. We have a specific problem and we have a solution in mind. It would be easier to write that solution by ourselves than using an external library, right? This is a common mistake of many developers, which leads to a bad code quality. A good software developer should always use a library before writing code by himself. There are many advantages: Less errors: we will use tested code instead of writing new one (we already know that it works). Saving time: we avoid spending time into reinventing the wheel and writing more lines of code. More features: if the feature is available in some libraries, then other people could also benefit from it. It's easier to maintain our code: if we don't use complex code (no need to understand how our own abstractions work), then everyone can understand it and make changes easily. You might think "I only want some small feature". But this small feature could end up in a bug somewhere down the line, which you will have to fix in the future or someone else will have to fix it. You can also implement these features better than others have done before (that's always possible) but then I’m a big believer in using the standard library to make code better. The best way I’ve found to do that is to look at your code and find places that you could use the standard library, where it would make things easier for you. For example, if you see that you have a for loop over a vector or list, and you’re doing a find in the loop body, then pull out the find into an algorithm. If you find yourself writing a loop over a container of some kind, and you need to copy into another container, then use copy or transform. If you find yourself writing an if-statement with several tests in it, consider using an algorithm like any_of instead of writing all the tests by hand. If you find yourself writing a loop with two iterators (a begin and an end), then use distance on them to figure out how many elements there are.