1 Learning Modern Core Language Features

The C++ language has gone through a major transformation in the past decade with the development and release of C++11 and then, later, with its newer versions: C++14, C++17, and C++20. These new standards have introduced new concepts, simplified and extended existing syntax and semantics, and overall transformed the way we write code. C++11 looks like a new language, and code written using the new standards is called modern C++ code.

The recipes included in this chapter are as follows:

• Using auto whenever possible
• Creating type aliases and alias templates
• Understanding uniform initialization
• Understanding the various forms of non-static member initialization
• Controlling and querying object alignment
• Using scoped enumerations
• Using override and final for virtual methods
• Using range-based for loops to iterate on a range
• Enabling range-based for loops for custom types
• Using explicit constructors and conversion operators to avoid implicit conversion
• Using unnamed namespaces instead of static globals
• Using inline namespaces for symbol versioning
• Using structured bindings to handle multi-return values
• Simplifying code with class template argument deduction

Let's start by learning about automatic type deduction.