19.9 Use the Capabilities of the Library!

By far the most common mistake is not to use the full power of the library. If you find yourself writing a little "helper" class, consider why you are doing it. Or, if what you are writing is looking a little clumsy, then maybe there's a more elegant approach. A bit of searching through the Tools.h++ manual may uncover just the thing you're looking for!

Here's a surprisingly common example:

main(int argc, char* argv[]){
   char buf[120];                   //uh oh: possible overflow
   ifstream fstr(argv[1]);
   RWCString line;

   while (fstr.readline(buf,sizeof(buf)) {
     line = buf;                                //hmm: extra copy
     cout << line;
   }
}

This program reads lines from a file specified on the command line and prints them to standard output. By using the full abilities of the RWCString class it could be greatly simplified as follows:

main(int argc, char* argv[]){
   ifstream fstr(argv[1]);
   RWCString line;

   while (line.readLine(fstr)) {
     cout << line;
   }
}

There are countless other such examples. The point is, if it's looking awkward to you, most likely there's a better way!