Advanced C++ Programming Course

This course is for experienced C++ programmers who wish to deepen their understanding of the language and learn advanced techniques. The course consists of three modules.
 
A preliminary module reviews topics, including inheritance, the ANSI C++ Standard Library, templates. I/O streams and practical issues of C++ programming, such as reliability, testing, efficiency and interfacing to C. This material is covered as needed depending on the background of the participants.
 
The second module covers more advanced topics. Advanced issues of inheritance and polymorphism are covered. Principles of effective class design, including the orthodox canonical form, use of composition, templates and interface inheritance. The course covers exception handling and runtime type information (RTTI). Multiple inheritance is covered, including the complications that are introduced by this powerful feature. Advanced applications of C++ concepts are studied, including smart pointers and reference counting.
 
The third module introduces the Standard Template Library (STL). The main components of data structures, algorithms and iterators are covered. Illustrations are provided of a number of important containers, such as vectors, stacks, queues, lists and sets.

Extensive programming examples and exercises are provided. A number of progressively developed case studies are used to illustrate object oriented programming techniques and to give the participant practical experience in putting together features of C++ learned in the course. A file is provided containing all the examples and laboratory exercises in the course.

Upon completion of this course, the participant will be able to:

> Review intermediate features of C++ such as inheritance and templates
> Gain a more complete understanding of the issues involved in effective class design
> Learn important features of C++ such as exception handling, RTTI and multiple inheritance
> Learn advanced techniques such as smart pointers and reference counting
> Gain a working knowledge of the Standard Template Library

Module 1. Intermediate C++ Programming

Inheritance and Polymorphism
Class Derivation
Access Control
Base Class Initialization
Initializing Class Type Members
Polymorphism and Virtual Functions
Pointer Conversion
Virtual Destructors
Abstract Classes and Pure Virtual Functions

ANSI C++ Library
New Header Files
Namespaces in the Standard Library
ANSI C++ String Classes
Templates in the Standard Library

Templates
C++ Template Mechanism
Function Templates
Class Templates
Generic Programming
Implementing a General Array Class
Standard Template Library

Input/Output in C++
Streams I/O Library
Formatted Stream I/O
File I/O
I/O in User Defined Classes

Practical Aspects of C++ Programming
Interfacing C and C++
Namespaces
Reliability in C++ Programs
Testing Considerations
Efficiency Considerations

Module 2. Advanced C++ Topics

Advanced Polymorphism and Inheritance
Orthodox Canonical Form
Public, Private and Protected Inheritance
Composition vs. Inheritance
Templates vs. Inheritance
Interface Encapsulation

Exception Handling
C++ Exception Mechanism
Exceptions Compared to Other Error Handling Techniques
throw, try and catch
Exception Context and Stack Unwinding
Uncaught Exceptions
Automatic Cleanup in Exception Handling

Runtime Type Information
Runtime Type Information (RTTI) Mechanism
type_info Class and typeid Operator
Type Safe Pointer Conversion
New C++ Cast Syntax

Inheritance Hierarchies and Multiple Inheritance
Smalltalk Style Class Hierarchies
Collection Classes in Object-Based Hierarchies
Independent Class Hierarchies in C++
Multiple Inheritance
Resolving Ambiguities
Duplicate Subobjects
Virtual Base Classes
RTTI in Multiple Inheritance

Applications of C++ Concepts
Object Validation
Smart Pointers
Reference Counting
Generic Smart Pointers

Module 3. Fundamentals of STL

An Overview of Templates
Templates
Overloading functions
Template functions
Specializing a template function
Disambiguation under specialization
Template classes
An array template class
Instantiating a template class object
Rules for templates
Non member function with a template argument
Friends of template classes
Templates with multiple type parameters
Non type parameters for template classes
Comments regarding templates

Overview of the Standard Template Library
Perspective
History and evolution
New features in C++
The Standard Template Library
Design goals
Header files
STL components
Containers
Algorithms
Iterators

Examples from STL
Example: vectors, lists
Example: maps
Example: sets
Example: multiset
Example: find with a vector
Example: find with a list
Example: merge
Iterators
Function objects
Adaptors

STL Containers
Vector
Deque
List
The beauty of STL
Associative Containers
Set
Multiset
Map
Multimap

STL Iterators
Input iterators
Output iterators
Forward iterators
Backward iterators