C++ TR1

Thursday, March 27th, 2008

You should understand that the C++ programming language is not a finished programming language. It is evolving and improving.

You can check out my C++ history table if you want to recap.

In 2005 some new features were added to the C++ programming language. This was technically called an draft amendment or Technical Report  1 (TR1) but will later be included more officially into the new upcoming C++0x standard.

Below I shortly list what are included into TR1:

• Smart pointers
• Regular expressions
• New containers (tuple, array, unordered set, etc)
• Sophisticated random number generators
• Polymorphic function wrappers
• Type traits

Most C++ compiler and library vendors have not actually implemented those new TR1 features. But they are getting there.

For the Microsoft Visual C++ compiler you can get a beta TR1 implementation - part of what the Visual C++ team has dubbed the Visual C++ Feature Pack (there is actually more in the pack than TR1).

Update April 8th, 2008: Microsoft has released the TR1 implementation officially (i.e. it is not a beta anymore) part of the Visual C++ 2008 Feature Pack.

The smart shared_ptr will revolutionize resource management to the extreme. Say goodbye to the delete keyword! [See slide 16 in the shared_ptr presentation] This is like your new best friend garbage collector.

And with regular expressions we finally get an easy textual scanner/parser tool. 

Links:

• Detailed PowerPoint TR1 presentations from Stephan T. Lavavej  for regular expressions shared_ptr and functions. Read also the accompanying blogpost.
• Q&A on Visual C++ TR1 implementation
• Pete Beckers book: The C++ Standard Library Extensions: A Tutorial and Reference (Amazon.co.uk).