July 2002
Volume 20 Number 7

SOFTWARE TOOLS

Identifying and Managing Cyclic Physical Dependencies

Thomas Bergin
If you're not careful, a complex project can set you spinning in circles. This tool can help set your project straight.

The Application Watchman Class

Bill Trudell
A convenient First Line of Defense against memory misuse.

XParam — A General Purpose Serialization Framework for C++

Michael Brand, Ronnie Maor, and Sasha Gontmakher
From command-line processing to object serialization — this class does it all.

FEATURE

C and C++: Siblings

Bjarne Stroustrup
We're at a crossroads for compatibility between C and C++. Can siblings go their separate ways and still remain on speaking terms? In this first of three parts, Bjarne provides context for the discussion.

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS

The New C — Inline Functions

Randy Meyers
As if C weren’t fast enough already, C99 supports inline functions. Faster code, anyone?

Uncaught Exceptions — The Spiral Dance

Bobby Schmidt
A New Hope: C++Ox is coming, and the Empire seems to be listening.

Sutter’s Mill — A Pragmatic Look at Exception Specifications

Herb Sutter
The C++ feature that wasn’t.

DEPARTMENTS

Editor’s Forum

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C++ EXPERTS ON THE WEB

Conversations: Getting to the Point

Jim Hyslop and Herb Sutter
While the standard auto_ptr provides a safer alternative to raw pointers, it has its limitations and some surprising behavior. The Guru helps out by giving the narrator a boost — the library, that is. The Boost library has five smart pointers that provide a rich array of useful behavior.

The (B)Leading Edge: Building an Indexed File Using XDRStream, Part 3

Jack W. Reeves
Jack dives into the BtreeIndex class implementation. He walks through part of the code and discusses design details and trade-offs. He also shows how to use some of the more obscure functions within the IOStreams library, as well as some cool, but often overlooked, STL functions.

Object Interconnections: Dynamic CORBA, Part 1: The Dynamic Invocation Interface

Douglas C. Schmidt and Steve Vinoski
An important and growing class of applications requires the flexibility provided by Dynamic CORBA features. This column covers the basics of the CORBA DII, which is the client-side interface used for dynamic CORBA applications.