Efficient run-time dispatching in generic programming with minimal code bloat

Generic programming with C++ templates results in efficient but inflexible code: efficient, because the exact types of inputs to generic functions are known at compile time; inflexible because they must be known at compile time. We show how to achieve run-time polymorphism without compromising performance by instantiating the generic algorithm with a comprehensive set of possible parameter types, and choosing the appropriate instantiation at run time. Applying this approach naïvely can result in excessive template bloat: a large number of template instantiations, many of which are identical at the assembly level. We show practical examples of this approach quickly approaching the limits of the compiler. Consequently, we combine this method of run-time polymorphism for generic programming, with a strategy for reducing the number of necessary template instantiations. We report on using our approach in GIL, Adobe’s open source Generic Image Library. We observed a notable reduction, up to 70% at times, in executable sizes of our test programs. This was the case even with compilers that perform aggressive template hoisting at the compiler level, due to significantly smaller dispatching code. The framework draws from both the generic and generative programming paradigms, using static metaprogramming to fine tune the compilation of a generic library. Our test bed, GIL, is deployed in a real world industrial setting, where code size is often an important factor.     

NiHu: An open source C++ BEM library

This paper introduces NiHu, a C++ template library for boundary element methods (BEM). The library is capable of computing the coefficients of discretised boundary integral operators in a generic way with arbitrarily defined kernels and function spaces. NiHu’s template core defines the workflow of a general BEM algorithm independent of the specific application. The core provides expressive syntax, based on the operator notation of the BEM, reflecting the mathematics behind boundary elements in the C++ source code. The customisable Component library contains elements specific to particular applications such as different numerical integration techniques and regularisation methods. The library can be used for creating a standalone C++ application using external open source libraries, or compiling a Matlab toolbox through the MEX interface. By massively exploiting C++ template metaprogramming, NiHu generates optimised codes for specific applications, including heterogeneous problems. The paper introduces the main concepts of the novel development, demonstrates its versatility and flexibility and compares the implementation’s performance to that of other open source projects.     

Extending type systems in a library: Type-safe XML processing in C++

Type systems built directly into the compiler or interpreter of a programming language cannot be easily extended to keep track of run-time invariants of new abstractions. Yet, programming with domain-specific abstractions could benefit from additional static checking. This paper presents library techniques for extending the type system of C++ to support domain-specific abstractions. The main contribution is a programmable “subtype” relation. As a demonstration of the techniques, we implement a type system for defining type qualifiers in C++, as well as a type system for the XML processing language, capable of, e.g., statically guaranteeing that a program only produces valid XML documents according to a given XML schema.     

MultiArray: a C++ library for generic programming with arrays

In C++, multi‐dimensional arrays are often used but the language provides limited native support for them. The language, in its Standard Library, supplies sophisticated interfaces for manipulating sequential data, but relies on its bare‐bones C heritage for arrays. The MultiArray library, a part of the Boost library collection, enhances a C++ programmer's tool set with versatile multi‐dimensional array abstractions. It includes a general array class template and native array adaptors that support idiomatic array operations and interoperate with C++ Standard Library containers and algorithms. The arrays share a common interface, expressed as a generic programming concept, in terms of which generic array algorithms can be implemented. We present the library design, introduce a generic interface for array programming, demonstrate how the arrays integrate with the C++ Standard Library, and discuss the essential aspects of their implementation. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Tice: A real-time language compilable using C++ compilers

Model-based development (MBD) holds the promise to capture potential timing problems in embedded software during the early phases of the development, securing the production of bug-free embedded software. For most MBD approaches, the source code is just an intermediate artifact that can be generated automatically from the models. This assumption clashes with an undeniable fact: a large share of the commercial embedded software exploits existing libraries or is developed using C/C++ natively. A way to reconcile the ambitions of MBD with the use of a programming language is by offering new language constructs and an innovative compilation tool-chain that prevents model error and timing problems “by construction.” However, the persistent popularity of C/C++ among embedded programmers and the limited availability of tools have severely limited the uptake of alternative programming languages for embedded software. Therefore, we propose an original route. Our language proposal, named Tice, has been shaped as a C++ active library. Tice retains full compatibility with existing C++ code, which can be integrated easily into new Tice-based projects. The enforcement of Tice syntax and semantics can be made by a standard C++ compiler, forgoing the need for new tools. In this article, we describe Tice's syntax, semantics, and model of computation and communication. We demonstrate Tice's practical applicability on an industrial scale use-case and give ample evidence for Tice's efficient compilation using off-the-shelf C++ compilers. Finally, we show Tice's code generation process.     

Programming with C++ concepts

This paper explores the definition, applications, and limitations of concepts and concept maps in C++, with a focus on library composition. We also compare and contrast concepts to adaptation mechanisms in other languages.Efficient, non-intrusive adaptation mechanisms are essential when adapting data structures to a library’s API. Development with reusable components is a widely practiced method of building software. Components vary in form, ranging from source code to non-modifiable binary libraries. The Concepts language features, slated to appear in the next version of C++, have been designed with such compositions in mind, promising an improved ability to create generic, non-intrusive, efficient, and identity-preserving adapters.We report on two cases of data structure adaptation between different libraries, and illustrate best practices and idioms. First, we adapt GUI widgets from several libraries, with differing APIs, for use with a generic layout engine. We further develop this example to describe the run-time concept idiom, extending the applicability of concepts to domains where run-time polymorphism is required. Second, we compose an image processing library and a graph algorithm library, by making use of a transparent adaptation layer, enabling the efficient application of graph algorithms to the image processing domain. We use the adaptation layer to realize a few key algorithms, and report little or no performance degradation.     

C++反射机制的一种简单实现

讨论了C++反射机制的实现问题，介绍了反射机制的概念和分类，比较了向C++添加反射机制的可能性和方式，提出并分析了一种基于宏定义、模板和泛型机制的C++反射机制实现手段——“简单C++反射机制（Simple C++ Reflection SCR）”。     

Parc++: A parallel C++

PARC++ is a system that supports object-oriented parallel programming in C++. PARC++ provides the user with a set of predefined C++ classes that can easily be used for the construction of parallel C++ programs. With the help of PARC++ objects, the programmer is able to create and start new processes (threads), to synchronize their activities (Blocklock, Monitor) and to manage communication via message passing (Mailbox). PARC++ is written in C++ and currently runs on top of the EMEX operating system on a FORCE machine with 11 processing elements and an EDS (European Declarative System) with 28 processing elements. The paper also contains information about the run-time system model, the implementation and some performance measurements.     

元组容器在C++中的设计与实现

C 是一种静态类型语言,这就使实现可以容纳不同种类型元素的容器——元组变得十分困难。C 的标准容器库STL虽然提供了丰富的容器,但其都只能容纳相同类型的元素,没有提供对元组容器的支持。其实C 的模板机制为它的静态类型系统增加了很大的灵活性,再使用一些其它的技巧,使得实现元组容器成为可能。wyf::tuple就是如此实现的一个元组容器的程序库。wyf::tuple不但可以保证类型安全,并且是高效的。测试数据表明,它要比一些动态语言如Python中的类似容器高效得多。     

The Lambda Library: unnamed functions in C++

The Lambda Library (LL) adds a form of lambda functions to C++, which are common in functional programming languages. The LL is implemented as a template library using standard C++; thus no language extensions or preprocessing is required. The LL consists of a rich set of tools for defining unnamed functions. In particular these unnamed functions work seamlessly with the generic algorithms in the C++ Standard Library. The LL offers significant improvements, in terms of generality and ease of use, compared to the current tools in the C++ Standard Library. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Design and implementation aspects of an experimental C++ programming environment

A good programming language alone is not sufficient for economic software production. The programming environment has a significant influence on the productivity of software engineers. Providing a programmer with information about an object-oriented software system requires extracting information from the source code, e.g. class, method and variable names. We use separate structure files for holding this information and take advantage of proven tools such as make and the C preprocessor for keeping the structure files up to date and for processing software systems that heavily use macros. In this paper we describe the concepts used for comfortable processing of C++ software systems, and discuss interesting design and implementation aspects, including structure files, the applied make mechanism and the exploitation of the C preprocessor.     

为C++语言开发长度可变的数组类模板

本文详细讨论了可以代替C 数组的C 数组类模板的设计及实现过程，并举例说明了数组类模板的使用。     

On Efficiency and Optimization of C++ Programs

The efficiency of object-oriented programs has become a point of great interest. One necessary factor for program efficiency is the optimization techniques involved. This paper presents the performance of several variations of a given C++ program and compares them with a version that uses no object-oriented features. Our result indicates that some object-oriented features in C++ are not well optimized in current C++ compilers. We thus discuss some code optimization techniques that can improve the efficiency based on the given C++ program.     

Comparing observed bug and productivity rates for Java and C++

An experiment was conducted to compare programmer productivity and defect rates for Java and C++. A modified version of the Personal Software Process (PSP) was used to gather defect rate, bug rate, and productivity data on C++ and Java during two real world development projects. A bug is defined to be a problem detected during testing or deployment. A defect is either a bug, or an error detected during compile time. A typical C++ program had two to three times as many bugs per line of code as a typical Java program. C++ also generated between 15 per cent and 50 per cent more defects per line, and perhaps took six times as long to debug. Java was between 30 per cent and 200 per cent more productive, in terms of lines of code per minute. When defects were measured against development time, Java and C++ showed no difference, but C++ had two to three times as many bugs per hour. Statistics were generated using Student's t‐test at a 95 per cent confidence level. Some discussion of why the differences occurred is included, but the reasons offered have not been tested experimentally. The study is limited to one programmer over two projects, so it is not a definitive experimental result. The programmer was experienced in C++, but only learning Java, so the results would probably favour Java more strongly for equally‐experienced programmers. The experiment shows that it is possible to experimentally measure the fitness of a programming language. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A C++ Simulator Generator from Graphical Specifications

Many languages for computer systems simulation (like GPSS and CSim) use a stochastic model of systems with the provision of adding procedural code for those aspects of the system that cannot be captured easily by a stochastic model. However, they do not support the hierachical simulation of complex systems well. Complex computer systems may have to be simulated at various levels of abstraction in the interests of tractability: the flexibility of being able to freely move between the different levels of abstraction is very desirable. For example, in the area of computer architecture, one might have analytical models, detailed simulation models and trace-driven models. In addition, these languages do not have user-friendly interfaces for specification of the simulated system. In this paper, we discuss the design and implementation of a simulation package for hierachical simulation of non-real-time computer systems: a Simulator Generator from a Graphical System Specification (SIGGSYS}). A new language for system specification has been designed. In addition, the package has the following components: • A graphical user interface to aid specification of the system to be simulated. • A rear end that generates C++ code that implements a simulator for the specified system. • A complete object library along with the header files that implement a functionally complete set of C++ base classes which can be built upon. C++ has been chosen as the intermediate language so that the modeller can use its support for object oriented programming. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A comparative evaluation of generic programming in Java and C++

Generic programming has been defined as ‘programming with concepts’ where a concept refers to a family of abstractions. The criteria for generic programming include independence of collections from data types, independence of algorithms that operate on the collection, and the adaptability of the collections. This paper examines and evaluates the support for generic programming in the Java Development Kit (JDK) in comparison to C++'s Standard Template Library (STL). The evaluation will consider both the ‘qualitative’ factors as well as certain ‘quantitative’ factors (i.e. factors that can be measured). The qualitative factors that are considered include: 1. a comparison of the structure and APIs; 2. homogeneity versus heterogeneity; and 3. ease of use (including ease of converting to collection classes, ease of changing collection type, and ease of error handling). The quantitative factors include: 1. compiled size; 2. runtime memory usage; and 3. performance. The results of our evaluative comparisons based on the above factors and certain other criteria are presented at the end. Based on the results, we conclude that the support provided for generic programming in C++'s STL is superior to that provided by JDK. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Simple and safe SQL queries with C++ templates

Most large software applications rely on an external relational database for storing and managing persistent data. Typically, such applications interact with the database by first constructing strings that represent SQL statements, and then submitting these for execution by the database engine. The fact that these statements are only checked for correctness at runtime is a source for many potential defects, including type and syntax errors and vulnerability to injection attacks.The AraRat system presented here offers a method for dealing with these difficulties by coercing the host C++ compiler to do the necessary checks of the generated strings. A library of templates and preprocessor directives is used to embed in C++ a little language representing an augmented relational algebra formalism. Type checking of this embedded language, carried out by our template library, assures, at compile-time, the correctness and safety of the generated SQL strings. All SQL statements constructed by AraRat are guaranteed to be syntactically correct, and type safe with respect to the database schema. Moreover, AraRat statically ensures that the generated statements are immune to all injection attacks.The standard techniques of “expression templates” and “compile-time symbolic derivation” for compile-time representation of symbolic structures, are enhanced in our system. We demonstrate the support of a type system and a symbol table lookup of the symbolic structure. A key observation of this work is that type equivalence of instantiated nominally typed generics in C++ (as well as other languages, e.g., Java) is structural rather than nominal. This makes it possible to embed the structural type system, characteristic to persistent data management, in the nominal type system of C++.For some of its advanced features, AraRat relies on two small extensions to the standard C++ language: the typeof pseudo operator and the __COUNTER__ preprocessor macro.     

本科计算机专业C++程序设计教学的不足及对策

为了使C++程序设计课程教学更加贴近实战,提高学生的程序设计能力,本文分析了当前高校中计算机类专业C++程序设计课程教学存在的不足,并给出了相应建议。     

基于VC++复数模板实现一般复矩阵的奇异值分解运算

Ｖｉｓｕａｌ　Ｃ＋＋以其方便的可视化集成编程环境,高效的代码实现功能,强大的基内库以及兼有低级语言可控制硬件操作的优点,成为一般工程项目的首选软件开发平台。涉及信号处理的实际工程常常需要处理复的数字信号,因此Ｖｉｓｕａｌ　Ｃ＋＋下如何实现复数运算是工程技术中软件开发必须面对的问题。该文详细阐述了ＶｉｓｕａｌＣ＋＋中利用复数模板实现复数运算的方法,给出了一些基本复数运算的实现代码;并基于该方法实现了算法已知的一般复矩阵的奇异值分解（ＣＳＶＤ）运算,很好地满足了实际工程信号处理软件模块的需要,证明了该方法的正确性。发现了 Ｖｉｓｕａｌ　Ｃ＋＋５．０和Ｖｉｓｕａｌ　Ｃ＋＋６．０一个声明的复数模板函数在其标准Ｃ＋＋库中没有具体实现,通过编写同名模板函数解决了这一问题。