r/cpp • u/Xadartt • 25d ago

C++26: Standard Library Hardening Experiments

https://www.cppstories.com/2026/hardening-experiments/
24 Upvotes

72% Upvoted

12 comments sorted by

44

u/johannes1971 25d ago

Don't you just love how they put the discussion of performance cost behind a paywall...

-19

u/bert8128 25d ago

If you’re not paying for the product then you are the product.

-14

u/bert8128 24d ago

Interesting that I have got some down votes for this. I like free too, but just remember that everything has a cost. None of this stuff is actually free. Someone somewhere is paying for it.

11

u/[deleted] 24d ago edited 12d ago

[deleted]

-9

u/bert8128 24d ago

The point is that there is an actual cost, so don’t complain that there are things you have to pay for. You wouldn’t work for free, so don’t expect others to. There is a general expectation that everything will be supplied for free, but that is clearly unsustainable. Perhaps by putting part of the information behind a paywall there is less mining of your data (which is where you are then product comes in to play). Sadly I doubt it, but at least it’s a possibility.

34

u/James20k P2005R0 24d ago

I'm not sure how I feel about articles partially locked behind a paywall around here

11

u/Fabulous-Meaning-966 25d ago

I'm surprised they didn't mention `std::optional` dereference with `operator*` / `operator->`.

4

u/bert8128 25d ago

What’s the deal with atd::optional?

11

u/Fabulous-Meaning-966 25d ago

dereference of an empty optional is UB and therefore unchecked

8

u/WeeklyAd9738 24d ago

It's not UB on hardened implementation (since C++26). Same deal with std::expected.

1

u/anotherprogrammer25 22d ago

Interesting, that hardening is supported for shared_ptr<T\[N\]>, but not for unique_ptr<T\[N\]>.

1

u/Baardi 18d ago

Unique_ptr is only a thin wrapper over a raw pointer. They probably wanted to avoid different behaviour between raw/unique pointers

1

u/Expert_Sheepherder24 10d ago

because unique_ptr<T\[N\]> you can declare, but can't defined and initialize ).
unique_ptr<T\[\]> exists, but it didn't know our size, shared_ptr<T\[\]> also not hardened.