In the section on "Good Encapsulation" in Code Complete, it is recommended to hide private implementation details. An example is given in C++. The idea is basically to completely separate the inter...

d-pointers are heavily used in Qt, they are an implementation of pimpl idiom. I know advantages and disadvantages of pimpl idiom. But I have missed the advantages of d-pointers implementation. Here...

There have been a few questions on SO about the pimpl idiom, but I'm more curious about how often it is leveraged in practice. I understand there are some trade-offs between performance and encaps...

When I use the pimpl idiom, is it a good idea to put all the methods definitions inside the class definition? For example: // in A.h class A { class impl; boost::scoped_ptr<impl> pimpl; p...

boost::shared_ptr really bothers me. Certainly, I understand the utility of such a thing, but I wish that I could use the shared_ptr<A> as an A*. Consider the following code class A { public...

Per my previous question, I wish that a boost::shared_ptr<A> was actually a subclass of A (or perhaps A*) so that it could be used in methods that took A* as their argument. Consider the fol...

After reading about the pimpl idiom I was horrified! Isn't there a tool out there that can inspect a .h/.cpp file and deduce what dependencies could be waivered?

Consider the following: PImpl.hpp class Impl; class PImpl { Impl* pimpl; PImpl() : pimpl(new Impl) { } ~PImpl() { delete pimpl; } void DoSomething(); }; PImpl.cpp #include "PImpl.hpp" #in...

I recently switched back from Java and Ruby to C++, and much to my surprise I have to recompile files that use the public interface when I change the method signature of a private method, because a...

Sometimes, C++'s notion of privacy just baffles me :-) class Foo { struct Bar; Bar* p; public: Bar* operator->() const { return p; } }; struct Foo::Bar { void baz() { std::cout <...

(Yes, I know that one machine instruction usually doesn't matter. I'm asking this question because I want to understand the pimpl idiom, and use it in the best possible way; and because sometimes I...

What kind of tricks can be used to minimize the workload of implementing pImpl classes? Header: class Foo { struct Impl; boost::scoped_ptr<Impl> self; public: Foo(int arg); ~Foo(); // ...

I'd like to design a class Foo that stores various data of different types and returns iterators over them. It's supposed to be generic, so the user of Foo does not know how the data is stored (Foo...

Is there any reason for the implementation class as used in the pimpl idiom to have any private members at all? The only reason I can really think of is to protect yourself from yourself -- i.e. th...

Pimpl's are a source of boilerplate in a lot of C++ code. They seem like the kind of thing that a combination of macros, templates, and maybe a little external tool help could solve, but I'm not su...

One problem in large C++ projects can be build times. There is some class high up in your dependency tree which you would need to work on, but usually you avoid doing so because every build takes a...

I want to use pimpl idiom with inheritance. Here is the base public class and its implementation class: class A { public: A(){pAImpl = new AImpl;}; void foo(){pAImpl->foo();}; private: AI...

As I understand, the pimpl idiom is exists only because C++ forces you to place all the private class members in the header. If the header were to contain only the public interface, theoretically, ...