Canonical class idioms

Instructor's Guide


intro polymorphism idioms patterns events summary, Q/A, literature
The multitude of constructs available in C++ to support object-oriented programming may lead the reader to think that object-oriented programming is not at all meant to reduce the complexity of programming but rather to increase it, for the joy of programming so to speak. This impression is partly justified, since the number and complexity of constructs is at first sight indeed slightly bewildering. However, it is necessary to realize that each of the constructs introduced (classes, constructors and destructors, protection mechanisms, type conversion, overloading, virtual functions and dynamic binding) may in some way be essential to support object-oriented programming in a type-safe, and yet convenient, way.

Having studied the mechanisms, the next step is to find proper ways, recipes as it were, to use these mechanisms. What we need, in the terminology of  [Coplien92], are idioms, that is established ways of solving particular problems with the mechanisms we have available. In his excellent book, Coplien discusses a number of advanced C++ idioms for a variety of problem domains, including signal processing and symbolic computing.

In this section, we will look at the concrete class idiom for C++, which states the ingredients that every class must have to behave as if it were a built-in type. Other idioms, in particular an improved version of the handle/body or envelope/letter idiom that may be used to separate interface from implementation, will be treated in the next section.

Concrete data types in C++

A concrete data type is the realization of an abstract data type. When a concrete data type is correctly implemented it must satisfy the requirements imposed by the definition of the abstract data type it realizes. These requirements specify what operations are defined for that type, and also their effects. In principle, these requirements may be formally specified, but in practice just an informal description is usually given. Apart from the demands imposed by a more abstract view of the functionality of the type, a programmer usually also wishes to meet other requirements, such as speed, efficiency in terms of storage and error conditions, to prevent the removal of an item from an empty stack, for example. The latter requirements may be characterized as requirements imposed by implementation concerns, whereas the former generally result from design considerations.

Canonical class in C++

Abstract data types must be indistinguishable from built-in types


slide: Canonical class

To verify whether a concrete data type meets the requirements imposed by the specification of the abstract data type is quite straightforward, although not always easy. However, the task of verifying whether a concrete data type is optimally implemented is rather less well defined. To arrive at an optimal implementation may involve a lot of skill and ingenuity, and in general it is hard to decide whether the right choices have been made. Establishing trade-offs and making choices, for better or worse, is a matter of experience, and crucially depends upon the skill in handling the tools and mechanisms available.

When defining concrete data types, the list of requirements defining the canonical class idiom given in slide 2-canonical may be used as a check list to determine whether all the necessary features of a class have been defined. Ultimately, the programmer should strive to realize abstract data types in such a way that their behavior is in some sense indistinguishable from the behavior of the built-in data types. Since this may involve a lot of work, this need not be a primary aim in the first stages of a software development project. But for class libraries to work properly, it is simply essential.