## Strings in C++ Switch/Case statements

January 10, 2017

Something that used to bug me—used to, because I am so accustomed to work around it that I rarely notice the problem—is that in neither C nor C++ you can use strings (const char * or std::string) in switch/case statement. Indeed, the switch/case statement works only on integral values (an enum, an integral type such as char and int, or an object type with implicit cast to an integral type). But strings aren’t of integral types!

In pure C, we’re pretty much done for. The C preprocessor is too weak to help us built compile-time expression out of strings (or, more exactly, const char *), and there’sn’t much else in the language to help us. However, things are a bit different in C++.

## Size(_t) matters!

December 27, 2016

Sometime last week, a tweet from @nixCraft prompted the question, quite ironically, how do you get the maximum (largest positive) value for an integer?

## Serializing Trees

September 6, 2016

Quite a while ago I discussed using flat arrays and address calculations to store a tree in a simple array. The trick wasn’t new (I think it’s due to Williams, 1964 [1]), but is only really practical when we consider heaps, or otherwise very well balanced trees. If you have a misshapen tree, that trick doesn’t help you. It doesn’t help you either if you try to serialize a misshapen tree to disk.

But what if we do want to serialize arbitrarily-shaped trees to disk? Is it painful? Fortunately, no! Let’s see how.

## Making a good random table

April 5, 2016

I am still experimenting with hash functions, and I was toying with the Zobrist hash function[1] that is best known for its use in chess engines. The hash function is conceptually simple: you need a large table of random numbers, indexed, in a chess application, by the position on the board of the piece and by the piece itself. To compute a hash for a whole board configuration, you simply xor all the random numbers together. The hard part is choosing the random numbers.

## Storage size from bits

March 29, 2016

Last week, we had a look at the computation of Log2 using templates and constexpr. Of course, I had ulterior motives. In particular, I was interested in allocating just the right number of bits for a field in a bit field, but rather than hard-coding it, having it deduced from a template argument. Let’s see how we can do that.

## Log2 (with C++ metaprogramming)

March 22, 2016

C++ meta-programming a powerful tool. Not only can you use it to build generic types (such as the STL’s std::list), you can also use it to have compile-time evaluation. Let’s have a look at a simple problem that can be solved in two very different ways: computing the Log base 2 of an integer.

## Rotating Arrays (part II)

February 16, 2016

Last week we had a look at Kernighan’s algorithm to rotate an array $k$ position and concluded that it might not be optimal, as each element was moved twice. This week, we’ll have a look at another algorithm that moves some items more than once, but overall will do less than two exchanges per items.