Herb Sutter Style Guide

Overview

Herb Sutter chairs the ISO C++ standards committee and has shaped modern C++ more than almost anyone. His “Exceptional C++” series and “GotW” (Guru of the Week) columns defined how we think about exception safety, const correctness, and defensive C++.

Core Philosophy

“Don’t optimize prematurely. Don’t pessimize prematurely.”

“Write for clarity and correctness first. Optimize measured bottlenecks.”

Sutter believes in defensive programming: code that handles errors gracefully, maintains invariants, and fails safely when the unexpected happens.

Design Principles

1. Exception Safety is Non-Negotiable: Every function has an exception safety guarantee. Know which one yours provides.

2. Const Correctness: const isn’t decoration—it’s documentation and enforcement of intent.

3. Single Responsibility: Each class, each function, each parameter does one thing.

4. Value Semantics by Default: Prefer values over pointers. Prefer smart pointers over raw.

Exception Safety Guarantees

Every function provides one of these guarantees:

When Writing Code

Always

• Know and document your exception safety guarantee
• Make swap operations noexcept
• Make destructors noexcept
• Make move operations noexcept when possible
• Use const member functions when state isn’t modified
• Prefer auto for complex types, explicit types for documentation
• Use RAII for all resources (no leak on any code path)

Never

• Throw from destructors
• Let exceptions escape callbacks/handlers without catch
• Write functions that provide no exception safety guarantee
• Use const_cast to remove const from const data
• Return raw pointers to owned resources

Prefer

• make_unique/make_shared over new
• Copy-and-swap for exception-safe assignment
• Algorithms over raw loops
• std::optional over pointer-or-null patterns
• std::variant over union + type tag

Code Patterns

Exception-Safe Assignment (Strong Guarantee)

class Stack {
    T* data_;
    size_t size_;
    size_t capacity_;
public:
    // STRONG guarantee via copy-and-swap
    Stack& operator=(Stack other) noexcept {
        swap(*this, other);
        return *this;
    }
    
    friend void swap(Stack& a, Stack& b) noexcept {
        using std::swap;
        swap(a.data_, b.data_);
        swap(a.size_, b.size_);
        swap(a.capacity_, b.capacity_);
    }
    
    // STRONG guarantee for push
    void push(const T& value) {
        if (size_ == capacity_) {
            // Create new buffer first (might throw)
            Stack temp;
            temp.reserve(capacity_ * 2);
            for (size_t i = 0; i < size_; ++i)
                temp.data_[i] = data_[i];
            temp.size_ = size_;
            
            // Commit phase (noexcept)
            swap(*this, temp);
        }
        data_[size_++] = value;
    }
};

Const Correctness Patterns

class Widget {
    std::vector<int> data_;
    mutable std::mutex mutex_;  // mutable: okay for logical const
    
public:
    // Const member function: promises not to modify logical state
    std::vector<int> getData() const {
        std::lock_guard<std::mutex> lock(mutex_);  // mutable allows this
        return data_;  // Return copy
    }
    
    // Non-const overload when modification needed
    std::vector<int>& data() { return data_; }
    
    // Const ref for read-only access (no copy)
    const std::vector<int>& data() const { return data_; }
};

Pimpl Done Right (Sutter’s Approach)

// widget.h
#include <memory>

class Widget {
public:
    Widget();
    ~Widget();                              // Defined in .cpp
    Widget(Widget&&) noexcept;              // Defined in .cpp
    Widget& operator=(Widget&&) noexcept;   // Defined in .cpp
    
    Widget(const Widget&);                  // Defined in .cpp
    Widget& operator=(const Widget&);       // Defined in .cpp
    
    void doSomething();
    
private:
    struct Impl;
    std::unique_ptr<Impl> pImpl_;
};

// widget.cpp
struct Widget::Impl {
    std::string name;
    std::vector<int> data;
    
    void doSomethingImpl() { /* ... */ }
};

Widget::Widget() : pImpl_(std::make_unique<Impl>()) {}
Widget::~Widget() = default;
Widget::Widget(Widget&&) noexcept = default;
Widget& Widget::operator=(Widget&&) noexcept = default;

Widget::Widget(const Widget& other)
    : pImpl_(std::make_unique<Impl>(*other.pImpl_)) {}

Widget& Widget::operator=(const Widget& other) {
    *pImpl_ = *other.pImpl_;
    return *this;
}

void Widget::doSomething() { pImpl_->doSomethingImpl(); }

Mental Model

Sutter thinks in terms of contracts and guarantees:

1. Preconditions: What must be true when function is called?
2. Postconditions: What is guaranteed after function returns?
3. Exception guarantee: What happens if something throws?
4. Thread safety: What synchronization is needed?

GotW Wisdom

Key lessons from Guru of the Week:

• Prefer ++i to i++
• Virtual functions should be private, rarely protected, only public for interfaces
• Minimize #include dependencies
• Never write using namespace in headers
• Make const-qualified overloads return const (or by value)