[Qt-interest] Qt coding guidelines/conventions

[Gabriel M. Beddingfield]

On Thu, 25 Mar 2010, Mandeep Sandhu wrote:

> eg I've seen in Qt, member variables have a "m_" prefixed to
> them...something similar is mentioned in the MythTV guidelines which
> uses Qt (http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Coding_Standards)

m_ is fairly standard... even amoung projects that don't use 
hungarian notation.  However, I've personally switched to 
just _ for member variables (since I don't use HN).

Definately find /some/ way to mark member variables.  It 
makes the code much easier to follow.

FWIW, I'm a better man for reading Qt's source code.

> Also, since I no longer have the luxury of automatic garbage
> collection (ah...I miss java! :P) and guidelines on how to protect
> yourself from those nefarious memory leaks?
>
> Some helpful stuff I found was using QPointer, which makes the task of
> checking for dangling pointers easy.

Some manner of smart pointer is the way to go.  You should 
also check out:

    std::auto_ptr<>        Basic managed pointer, not shared
    boost::shared_ptr<>    A reference-counted pointer
    boost::weak_ptr<>      Similar to QPointer

Also good books on C++ (incl. style):

     "Thinking in C++" Vol 1 & 2
     by Bruce Eckel
     http://www.mindview.net/Books/TICPP/ThinkingInCPP2e.html

-gabriel