5. We have endeavored not to use any particular vendor’s version of C++. We have tested the code on all the implementations we could, and when one implementation absolutely refused to work because it doesn’t conform to the C++ Standard, we’ve flagged that fact in the example (you’ll see the flags in the source code) to exclude it from the build process.
6. Automate the compiling and testing of the code in the book. We have discovered that code that isn’t compiled and tested is probably broken, so in this volume we’ve instrumented the examples with test code. In addition, the code that you can download from http://www.MindView.net has been extracted directly from the text of the book using programs that also automatically create makefiles to compile and run the tests. This way we know that the code in the book is correct.
Chapters
Here is a brief description of the chapters contained in this book:
Part 1: Building Stable Systems
1. Exception handling. Error handling has always been a problem in programming. Even if you dutifully return error information or set a flag, the function caller may simply ignore it. Exception handling is a primary feature in C++ that solves this problem by allowing you to «throw» an object out of your function when a critical error happens. You throw different types of objects for different errors, and the function caller «catches» these objects in separate error handling routines. If you throw an exception, it cannot be ignored, so you can guarantee that something will happen in response to your error. The decision to use exceptions (a good one!) affects code design in fundamental ways.
2. Defensive Programming. Many software problems can be prevented. To program defensively is to craft code in such a way that bugs can be found and fixed early before they have a chance to do damage in the field.