Manoj Debnath

There are many data types in C++; some are related to each other. Conversion between related types is implicitly supported by C++. However, between unrelated types, we need to forcefully cast them or need to write an explicit conversion function. This article focuses on some of the key aspects of automatic type conversion in C++ […]

As the name suggests, a copy constructor is typically used to create a copy of an object. There are many intricate details about how it operates and how it is used. It also helps in control passing and returning of user-defined types by value during function calls. This article gets into some of the conceptual […]

C++ enables us to overload almost all the operators barring a few. Overloading some of them is highly intuitive whereas some others are a bit tricky. They have a slightly different syntax for overloading, that’s all. For example, overloading a subscript operator requires that it must be a member function and single argument. This article […]

Before we answer the question, we must understand the idea of operator overloading. The basic tenet of operator overloading is to give a new meaning to the conventional operations associated with the operator. It simply is another way to call a function but there are some differences. This article explores the concept and its utility […]

Using C++ references is similar to the use of constant pointers. A reference automatically gets dereferenced to the location it point to. It is typically used in association with function argument list and return values. It has many other uses apart from this; a reference also can be used as a freestanding reference. This article […]

The idea of inline is derived from C’s preprocessor macros, which, in turn, is derived from assembly language programming. The objective is to leverage the efficiency of a function without the overhead of a function call, such as placing data on a stack and retrieving the result. Preprocessor macros do not align well with the […]

Macros are used for efficiency in C. The C++ language inherited them as a legacy. There are issues with the use of preprocessor macros, especially when used in C++. Therefore, C++ provides a better alternative, called inline functions. Because inline functions are a derivative of macros, this article first gets into the key issues of […]

Processing strings is a common operation in any programming language. And, almost all programming languages provide some form of library APIs to deal with string processing. The problem is that a string basically is a collection of characters that cannot be deemed as a primitive data type like int, float, char, etc. But, frequent use […]

Many programming languages support GUI development as one of the core parts of its language features. C/C++ has no such library attached to it; something like the string library,IO library, and so forth, that we frequently use. This shortcoming opened the horizon for developers to pick from a wide variety of GUI library toolkit available […]

Files are used to store large amounts of data in the secondary storage devices such as hard drives, optical disks, tapes, and so forth. We store data in variables and arrays, but they are temporary or non-persistent. To store persistent data, we generally use two types of file structures: flat files (unordered) or databases (ordered). […]

An exception refers to an instance that does not conform to a rule or generalization. It is an indication of a problem that may occur during program execution. The mechanism of exception handling provides a way to transfer control and information from the point of its occurrence during execution to the point where a handler […]

Pointers can be singled out as the most powerful feature of C/C++ programming. They are also regarded as the dreaded one, though unnecessarily. Modern programming languages have sidelined this idea, considering it to be more bane than boon. The apprehension seems logical from the perspective of rush-hour productivity. The hazards of using pointers is that […]