C++ Team Blog
The latest in C++, Visual Studio, VS Code, and vcpkg from the MSFT C++ team
Latest posts
Regular Expressions – Video Introduction to the STL, Part 8
C++0x's <regex> header combines Perl's regular expressions with C++'s templates and iterators. The result, like the rest of the STL, is insanely powerful but potentially overwhelming at first sight. It's actually easy to use, and much easier than writing string processing code by hand. I demonstrate how to start using <regex> in Part 8 of my video lecture series introducing the Standard Template Library. Previous parts: Part 1 (sequence containers) Part 2 (associative containers) Part 3 (smart pointers) Part 4 (Nurikabe solver) - see Wikipedia's article and my updated ...
Video Introduction to the STL, Parts 6 and 7
Part 6 and Part 7 of my video lecture series introducing the Standard Template Library are now available; they cover algorithms and functors. Previous parts: Part 1 (sequence containers)Part 2 (associative containers)Part 3 (smart pointers)Part 4 (Nurikabe solver introduction)Part 5 (Nurikabe solver conclusion) My Nurikabe solver, available here, demonstrates how I use the STL components that I've talked about. I've continued to optimize it; there's more work to do, but I've already obtained dramatic speedups: Here's the changelog: 1.0 (8/24/2010) - First version, appearing ...
More Hilo – Sharing Photos with Hilo
Hilo is back. Keeping our promise of delivering more Windows 7 developer fun, we bring you the third installment of the Hilo series. We continue building on the first two applications (covered in Chapters 1 thru 11 on this link). This time we have added features to share photos online and a much improved user interface. Below is a screenshot: These set of applications illustrate how to take advantage of the following Windows functionalities: You can download the source code for this application from the Hilo Code Gallery Page. The article introducing the above updates can be found here. ...
Video Introduction to the STL, Part 5
In the fifth part of my video lecture series introducing the Standard Template Library, I explain how the advanced analysis in my Nurikabe solver works. One of its steps involves using a breadth-first search to detect any unreachable cells. Mandatory prerequisites of Part 5 are reading Wikipedia's Nurikabe page and watching Part 4 (the introduction to my Nurikabe solver). It also assumes that you've watched Part 1 (sequence containers), Part 2 (associative containers), and Part 3 (smart pointers), or that you're already familiar with those topics. I highly encourage you to read this extended...
Video Introduction to the STL, Part 4
In the fourth part of my video lecture series introducing the Standard Template Library, I walk through an extended example of using the STL to solve Nurikabe puzzles. It assumes that you've read Wikipedia's Nurikabe page, and that you've watched Part 1 (sequence containers), Part 2 (associative containers), and Part 3 (smart pointers), or that you're already familiar with those topics. My original source code and output are available. I've been working on improving them, and I'm up to version 1.2. In Part 5 (which was filmed back-to-back; it's in the editing pipeline), I'll explain how I im...
Hilo Update – Introducing “Hilo Annotator”
In May this year, we announced Project Hilo and promised a set of cool sample applications written in C++. At that time we had released the first application in the Hilo series. Since then we have published some articles that walk the reader through all the steps that go into developing the Hilo Browser application (Chapter 1 thru 8 on this link). These articles describe the way we implemented the application in C++, our thought process for designing the application, as well as deep discussions on the source code and implementation using C++ and the modern application features in Windows 7. Now we are back with...
Video Introduction to the STL, Part 3
The third part of my video lecture series introducing the Standard Template Library is now available, following Part 1 and Part 2. Part 3 covers unique_ptr, shared_ptr, and exception handling (briefly). It explains my solution to the container erasure problem, and presents a significantly larger homework problem: writing a Nurikabe solver. In Part 4, the pieces that we've seen (sequence containers, associative containers, and smart pointers) will fall into place, and I'll walk through how my Nurikabe program works. Stephan T. LavavejVisual C++ Libraries Developer
The Filterator
My name is Ahmed Charles and I currently work on Windows Error Reporting. I believe that this is the first time that someone not on the VC team has written a blog, but I hope you will find it useful anyways. I’d like to thank Stephan T. Lavavej for the idea and valuable feedback while writing it. And we both owe the idea for the iterator to Boost. A common question from programmers who have an intermediate amount of experience with using the STL is, "How do I write an STL iterator?". Writing an STL iterator is not especially difficult – it just requires some care. ST...
Video Introduction to the STL, Part 2
The second part of my video lecture series introducing the Standard Template Library is now available. This part covers the STL's associative containers and the erase-remove idiom. It assumes that you've watched Part 1. More parts are on their way! Let me know in the comments what you'd like to see. Stephan T. LavavejVisual C++ Libraries Developer