Tag: c++

C++ language

Trim std::string implementation in C++

I was working with some strings and I wondered how you can trim a string in C++. Having iterators and so many algorithms (too many?) in the Standard Library gives a lot of flexibility, and some tasks were left out of the standards.

The flexibility of C++ feels like morally pushing you to also write flexible code which can cover a lot of needs. Most probably some things could be improved to my implementation of string trimming.

The functions are ltrim (erase from left), rtrim (erase from right) and trim (erase from left and right). All three take a reference to a string (the input string is modified) and a predicate function to match the characters you want to erase (std::isspace as default):

using Predicate = std::function<int(int)>;

static inline void ltrim(std::string &str, Predicate const &pred = isspace);

static inline void rtrim(std::string &str, Predicate const &pred = isspace);

static inline void trim(std::string &str, Predicate const &pred = isspace);

Continue reading Trim std::string implementation in C++

Pass function to thread (job scheduler update)

A simplification to the job scheduler from the previous post is to pass the job function to the thread managing the job call, instead of making a shared pointer and capture it in the lambda.

The schedule method changes to:

void Scheduler::schedule(const Job f, long n) {
    std::unique_lock<std::mutex> lock(this->mutex);
    condition.wait(lock, [this] { return this->count < this->size; });
    count++;

    std::thread thread{
            [this](const Job f, long n) {
                std::this_thread::sleep_for(std::chrono::milliseconds(n));

                try {
                    (*f)();
                } catch (const std::exception &e) {
                    this->error(e);
                } catch (...) {
                    this->error(std::runtime_error("Unknown error"));
                }

                condition.notify_one();
                count--;
            }, f, n
    };
    thread.detach();
}

A job scheduler in C++

Not long ago I started writing some C++ code, and a task that I enjoyed implementing was a very basic job scheduler (idea from dailycodingproblem.com). I’m sure there are “holes” to be filled in my implementation regarding performance, concurrency, and general correctness. This is an early dive into the language and this post is mostly for me, to explain some things to myself.

The scheduler takes a job (function) and a time (in milliseconds) and runs the job after the given time.

The first thing was to define a function pointer as the job type.

using Job = void (*)();

 

Another callback that I’ll be using is one to report job errors, which takes an exception as an argument.

using Error = void (*)(const std::exception &);

 

The scheduler class constructor takes a size and an error callback (to report errors). The size is the maximum number of jobs accepted until scheduling blocks and waits for a job to be finished.
An error callback is required. The first measure to ensure this is to delete the constructor that takes null for the error callback, which performs a compile-time check. Explicitly passing null will not be allowed, but a pointer that is null will be checked at runtime.

Scheduler(size_t size, Error error);
Scheduler(size_t size, nullptr_t) = delete;

Continue reading A job scheduler in C++

Playing with PHP extensions: building a map

I’ve ran into PHP-CPP, a C++ library which helps you build your own PHP extensions in an easier way than writing them from scratch. And I decided to play a little bit. It has good documentation and examples.

Installing is not always out of the box depending on the environment. I like to keep things clean on my working machines so I wanted to have everything in a Docker container, but I quickly ran into an issue installing the library. Fortunately, I’ve found a solution pretty fast.

The first idea that came into my mind was a simple map. Nothing special, I’m not bringing any improvements, I just wanted to convert the following into an extension. Continue reading Playing with PHP extensions: building a map