aeondave/cpp-patterns

C++ Patterns

This skill is for day-to-day modern C++: safety, clarity, and maintainable APIs.

If you’re focused on test writing/tooling, use cpp-testing.

When to activate

• Writing new C++ modules/libraries/services
• Reviewing PRs for ownership, lifetime, and exception safety
• Refactoring for cleaner interfaces and fewer footguns
• Introducing RAII, smart pointers, and standard library algorithms

Core rules (high signal)

• Prefer RAII for resource ownership; avoid raw new/delete.
• Use value types by default; use references/pointers to express optionality and non-ownership.
• Use std::unique_ptr for exclusive ownership; std::shared_ptr only when shared ownership is required.
• Prefer standard algorithms over hand-written loops when it improves clarity.
• Keep APIs small; make invalid states unrepresentable where feasible.
• Define clear error strategy: exceptions vs std::expected-style returns vs status codes.

Quick review checklist

• Ownership is explicit (who allocates, who frees)
• No leaks or dangling refs (temporaries, string_view, iterator invalidation)
• Rule of Zero is used; special members defined only when needed
• const correctness is consistent
• No surprising implicit conversions; use explicit
• Concurrency code has a cancellation/stop strategy

Resources

Load on demand:

• references/ownership-raii.md — ownership rules, RAII patterns, smart pointers, lifetime
• references/core-guidelines.md — distilled C++ Core Guidelines pointers
• references/api-design.md — interface design, value semantics, error strategy
• references/concurrency.md — jthread, mutex, atomic, condition_variable, stop_token, race detection
• references/tooling-build.md — compiler warnings, sanitizers, static analysis, binary inspection (MinGW/objdump, MSVC/dumpbin, Linux tools), CMake hygiene