Quick tips

I’ve rounded up some useful tips, none of which are really important enough to warrant a post just by themselves. So without further ado…

• If you’re running kdesvn-build, you can use the –refresh-build option to force the given modules to be built with a clean build directory. But what if you didn’t want to do that for all of the modules on the command line? What you can do instead is create a file called .refresh-me in the toplevel of the module’s build directory (e.g. build/kdelibs/.refresh-me). When kdesvn-build rebuilds the module, if it finds that file it will perform the build process as if –refresh-build had been passed. Since –refresh-build involves deleting the build directory this is a one-time-only event. Next time you build everything will work normally.
• Konqueror deserves several posts on its unique gems just on its own. But one thing I’ll mention is the address bar. There are two different keystrokes that I know of to quickly select the address bar: <strike>Ctrl</strike>Alt - O will select the address in the address bar, handy if you just need to make a quick change to go to a different address. Ctrl - L on the other hand, will delete the text in the address bar first. I think this is a holdover from earlier days to be honest though, as since the URL is selected by default I can’t think of anything that Ctrl - L can do that is easier than using <strike>Ctrl</strike>Alt - O. _Update 2:_One of the commenters pointed out that the selection buffer gets overwritten using Alt – O but is maintained with Ctrl – L. (i.e., when you middle-mouse-click to paste).
• Do you use QDataStream? If so then it is imperative that you set the version of the stream. What I mean by this is that sometimes the binary representation changes depending on what version of Qt you are using. So a stream saved by a older version of Qt may be unable to be read using a newer version of Qt with the default version settings. QDataStream is backwards compatible; you just need to know what version to set the stream to. The process is described in the API documentation. Basically you need to set a specific version before writing and before reading. Some types (such as the integer types) are guaranteed not to change their representation, which you can use for versioning.
• If you are a Qt programmer, then Thiago’s description of QString behavior is required reading.
• Many people know that the C++ delete operator can safely be called on 0. Per the standard, this is also true for the delete[] operator, so you don’t need to check for null either way. (Of course, there are reports of compilers that screw it up for delete[], sometimes you can’t have your cake and eat it too).
• And on that note, C++ has an interesting behavior that makes some variadic functions harder to use safely. To wit:
  • C has a NULL macro to represent the null pointer. Typically it would be along the lines of #define NULL ((void*) 0) or thereabouts. void * can be converted to any other pointer type so this is valid.
  • In C++ however, you can’t convert pointer types all willy-nilly. So the #define NULL ((void*) 0) doesn’t work. Instead you use plain 0, which C++ guarantees will be converted to the null pointer when used in a pointer context.
  • The key word here is “used in a pointer context”. Some variadic functions assume that the last parameter will be of a so-called sentinel value. It is up to the programmer to ensure they pass the sentinel correctly, and with the right type. For instance, many gstreamer varargs functions assume a null pointer will be the final argument.
  • If you use the NULL keyword things will work great in C and C++… if you’re on a system where int and pointers have the same size. On 64-bit systems this is not necessarily true.
  • The problem is that NULL is defined to plain 0 for C++. When 0 is passed as the last argument it is assumed to be of int type, not of a pointer type. For most 64-bit systems this will involve placing only 32-bits of 0 on the stack instead of the required 64-bits, and “undefined behavior” results.
  • The solution I used when I encountered this problem in KDE 3’s JuK was to simply define a GST_NULL that did the right thing. Other options are manually casting to a pointer type every time you use one of the vararg functions. But it’s something to keep in mind anytime you’re using variadic functions.
• The upcoming revision to the C++ standard will include an actual null pointer instead of faking it with 0 and at least this kind of issue can be fixed. Some compilers have already included such a feature (including GCC) and so you may have never encountered this problem.

That’s enough food for thought for now though, hopefully this is enlightening reading for most. Update: The keyboard shortcut is Alt – O, not Ctrl – O.