Chapter 10 Outlook: Introduction of C++20

C++20 seems to be an exciting update. For example, as early as C++11, the Concept, which was eager to call for high-altitude but ultimately lost, is now on the line. The C++ Organizing Committee decided to vote to finalize C++20 with many proposals, such as Concepts/Module/Coroutine/Ranges/ and so on. In this chapter, we'll take a look at some of the important features that C++20 will introduce.

Concept

The concept is a further enhancement to C++ template programming. In simple terms, the concept is a compile-time feature. It allows the compiler to evaluate template parameters at compile-time, greatly enhancing our experience with template programming in C++. When programming with templates, we often encounter a variety of heinous errors. This is because we have so far been unable to check and limit template parameters. For example, the following two lines of code can cause a lot of almost unreadable compilation errors:

#include <list>
#include <algorithm>
int main() {
    std::list<int> l = {1, 2, 3};
    std::sort(l.begin(), l.end());
    return 0;
}

The root cause of this code error is that std::sort must provide a random iterator for the sorting container, otherwise it will not be used, and we know that std::list does not support random access. In the conceptual language, the iterator in std::list does not satisfy the constraint of the concept of random iterators in std::sort. After introducing the concept, we can constrain the template parameters like this:

template <typename T>
requires Sortable<T> // Sortable is a concept
void sort(T& c);

abbreviate as:

template<Sortable T> // T is a Sortable typename
void sort(T& c)

Even use it directly as a type:

void sort(Sortable& c); // c is a Sortable type object

Let's look at a practical example.

TODO:

Module

TODO:

Contract

TODO:

Range

TODO:

Coroutine

TODO:

Conclusion

In general, I finally saw the exciting features of Concepts/Ranges/Modules in C++20. This is still full of charm for a programming language that is already in its thirties.

Further Readings

• Why Concepts didn't make C++17？
• C++11/14/17/20 Compiler Support
• C++ History