Introduction On modern architectures, the smallest unit of memory is a byte. However, if we’re storing a bool, using a byte of memory to store it as a bit (pun intended) is wasteful. The other 7 bits are unused. Additionally,…
Conditional operator allows us to do this: and this: Introduction The conditional operator (?:) is also called the arithmetic if operator. It’s a ternary operator, meaning it requires 3 operands. Historically, it’s been C++’s only ternary operator. It’s concise way…
Consider Seems fairly harmless. Despite achieving the same result (incrementing the operand), the prefix and postfix versions have slight differences. In terms of the loop variable i, does it matter if we do i++ vs ++i? Prefix increment Prefix increment…
Consider the following, The result isn’t 5 ?? cal should print 2 + (3 * 1) = 5. What’s going on? You’re assuming the function arguments gets evaluated left-to-right, cal(2, 3, 1). However, the first argument doesn’t necessarily have to…
Consider this program Here’s what happens This is additional overhead for simply getting a string. This is inefficient. Fortunately, we can do better. Since we don’t modify the string, this is a good justification to use std::string_view. Introducing std::string_view (C++17)…
Consider the following: Hey! What happened? We assigned binary values to the variable however std::cout printed their decimal representation. C++ allows us to initialize a variable with any numbering system All of these values are equivalent. However, the variable doesn’t…
Introduction Consider the following, Woah! Even though we didn’t specify the type of the variable, the compiler was able to deduce it. When auto is used, the compiler deduces the variable’s type from the initializer. Since literals already have types,…
Why variables should be made constant If a variable can be made constant, it generally should be made constant. Every moving part in a system increases complexity and the risk of defect or failure. Non-constant variables are moving parts, while…
Introduction Integers are great and all but if you want to store numbers with a fractional component. This is often what you see in the real world. Temperature, distance, currency all contain a fractional component. In these applications, you must…
Introduction The mass of the Earth is 5,972,200,000,000,000,000,000,000kg. How on Earth do you interpret that? (See what I did there). As an alternative, we can display it as 5.9722 x 10²⁴kg. This is scientific notation. It’s used to display very…